


The Vulkanite Heresy

by Auroch



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2020-09-28 23:33:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 16
Words: 39,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20434316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Auroch/pseuds/Auroch
Summary: Vulkan refuses to forgive the Emperor for the killing of the Lost Legions, and goes renegade. Eventually, this ends poorly. Many legions have divided or ambiguous loyalties, and the heroes and villains are less clear-cut.A less-grim, less-dark, but still pretty grimdark Alternate Heresy, inspired by the Dornian Heresy and the Roboutian Heresy. Unlike those, it also extends to the alien species of the Milky Way.To eventually contain Index Astartes entries for each non-lost legion, Biographica Primagenesis entries for each non-lost primarch, and various Index Xenos, Index Imperialis, etc. for other important figures and groups.





	1. Index Astartes: Legio I, Dark Angels

### Origins

It is of course well known that among the Emperor's servants, only the Custodes and the primarchs themselves are superior to the Last and First Legion, Lion El'Johnson's Dark Angels. The Sectus Angelorum Tenebrum is by far the most common nonconformist cult within the Imperial Church. It draws its appeal from their status as first among equals of the angels of death and from their position as the most human face among the ranks of the elevated; it draws its persistence from the Dark Angels themselves impeding and undermining the authority and position of any administrators, bishops, or inquisitives who move to squelch it. Therefore most of what I will say here will be repeating that which most citizens of the Imperium know. Nonetheless, I shall share all that I believe is verified, so that it can be clearly distinguished from that which is myth or probably-myth.

The Lion landed alone as a half-grown boy in the dark, Chaos-tainted forests of Caliban, and grew to adulthood in those forests (a matter of only a few years, as primarchs grew rapidly). Sar Luther, at that time considered the most promising young man in the Order, found him while he and other knights were conducting one of their periodic hunts to clear the Beasts out of the area near their settlements. While other knights wished to kill the wild man, Luther elected to bring him back to their fortress-home and see if he could be civilized. He could be and was, with astonishing rapidity, and soon he had surpassed his foster-father and the two were universally considered the presumptive future leadership of the Order. Sar Lion discovered, in a particularly large hunt, that he had a strategic talent far outstripping his formidable talents in other domains, and with his leadership and charisma the Order soon embarked on a Great Hunt, with the goal not just of pushing the Beasts back from civilization, but eradicating them entirely. There were some holdouts, but most knightly orders on Caliban were swayed within a few years. Five years into the Great Hunt, the only dissenters were the Knights of Lupus, who captured and trained Beasts as part and parcel of their way of life. Ultimately, they were besieged and destroyed, and within a few years the Great Hunt was a success and a golden age of Caliban had begun.

Not long after this, the Emperor arrived, and recruited his son to lead a much larger order; the Legio I Astartes, named by their primarch the Dark Angels. Luther, and eventually much of the Order's membership, underwent the transformation into space marines and joined the Great Crusade. Some years into the crusade, the Lion and Luther had a falling-out, and Luther was returned to Caliban to oversee recruitment. This proved to be a source of lasting regret to El'Johnson after the outset of the Heresy War, as in the cowardly attacks on the civilians and garrisons of the loyal legion homeworlds, Luther and all the Dark Angels on Caliban were slain and the planet, corrupted by some foul ritual, condemned to Exterminatus.

The Lion and his sons were not on the battlefields of Istvaan V for the drop site massacre; they were in the far eastern fringe of the galaxy fighting the Shield Worlds of the Gordian League. They rushed the end of the campaign, but it was still four months before they could disengage. When they did, the Ruinstorm blocked their passage, making it very difficult to make any progress. So it was that they missed the first five years of the war entirely. Lost utterly in the chaos and sustaining significant attrition, the Lion grew increasingly desperate. He declared thathis Librarians should disregard the Edict of Nikea and use any methods they deemed necessary to get the legion out of the mire. This ultimately led to skirmishes with elements of the Ultramarines and contact with the Ashen Claws, a chapter of Terra-born Raven Guard which had been detached and sent to the eastern fringes due to Corax's disgust at their custom of slave-taking. They had been recalled not long before the outbreak of the Heresy War, the successful reform of the Nostraman Night Lords leading Corax to reconsider and apologize for his exile of his Terran gene-sons. With their assistance and information, the Angels found a device known as the Tuchulcha, a sentient warp engine which could cut through the stormy warp and hide the entire fleet's warp signature. This they did, and so as the traitors massed for their final push to Terra, the First and Last Legion was in hot but stealthy pursuit.

As they entered the Sol Sector, they found the not-entirely-depleted defenses the Iron Sages and Imperial Fists had crewed to hold back the traitors. As they did, they were, despite their stealthy transit, hailed by an unknown craft, which they would come to discover was crewed by agents of the Hydra. Through this contact, they alerted the loyalists in the Sol System itself that they were en route. This was the only way their fellow loyalists knew they were present, for even as the traitors penetrated the defenses of Sol, the Lion held his forces back.

As the traitors finally committed to the Terran assault, moving within the orbit of Luna, El'Jonhson gave the order, and his fleet appeared in realspace moving with blistering speed. They passed Mars as the first dropships landed on Terra's surface, and 12 hours after the Siege of Terra began, it was a two-front battle with the traitors hard pressed. Only the traitors' overwhelming numerical advantage (aided by the massive size of the Ultramarines) and their eight to three advantage in primarchs (Sanguinius, the Lion, and Alpharius against Jaghatai, Guilliman, Fulgrim, Ferrus, Vulkan, Russ, Lorgar, and Alpharius) prevented them from being overwhelmed quickly. The exceptional performance and skill they displayed during the Siege, and their record as the only legion with no astartes whatsoever to fall during the Heresy, was was prompted the Imperial Vestige to except them from His decree that the legions and armies should be broken apart.

### Homeworld

As with the other loyal legions, the Dark Angel's ancestral homeworld of Caliban was ruined and depeopled by the traitorous Space Wolves. As the First and Last Legion has maintained legion strength, no single world suffices to fill its recruiting needs, nor could any single fortress-monastery hold all its brothers when they stepped away from the campaign. Of all the loyal gene-lines, the First Legion is the most religious in inclination, and so their custom is to place a Chapel-Garrison on every Shrine World near their campaigns, which serves as a recruiting center, hospital, repair shop, and communications post. When expanding the Imperial borders, they garrison whatever worlds they have used as command posts; this usually results in the world becoming a Shrine World as the sector is integrated into the Imperium.

### Combat Doctrine

Since their creation before their sibling legions, Legio I have always been generalists. Before the finding of their primarch, they were divided into six Hosts known as the Hexagrammaton, each with a specialty but all retaining competence, if not excellence, in each other's methods. When El'Jonson was found, he refocused them slightly and renamed them to match the traditions of Caliban; they were thereafter known as the Dreadwing, Deathwing, Firewing, Ironwing, Ravenwing, and Stormwing. All six are retained to the present day, though low demand for the total war speciality of the Dreadwing and the existence of the Shadow Brotherhood who are heavily specialized in the Firewing's modus operandi means that those have each shrunk to a token force. The Stormwing reduced greatly in the first dozen centuries after the Heresy War, but its remit expanded to assault specialists of all types and rebounded in the second millennium of the Imperium.

The main credo of the Dark Angels is not a style of warfare, but unshakable resolve to achieve victory. It is said, throughout the Imperium and beyond, that the First and Last Legion has never been defeated; certainly, the astartes of Legio I are committed to continuing that unblemished legacy and reputation. It is clear from examining campaign records that while the legion is usually deployed in a dozen or a few dozen places at any one time, each deployment group is several thousand marines, a scale rarely seen in deployment of any other astartes, except in the most dire circumstances as with pitched battle against a Black Crusade or fighting the largest of Ork WAAAAGH!s. Through deployment in excessive force, the First and Last ensures that they can defeat anything the enemy can throw at them.

### Organization

The Dark Angels are not only the only intact legion, but the most numerous gene-line. The Imperial Fist gene-line, which has founded many, many successor orders over the millennia, total between 200,000 and 350,000 astartes according to Mechanicum estimates. The First and Last have a claimed strength of 1 million, though the Mechanicum privately estimates that the true figure is lower, 800,000 at most. Combat groups are organized in Grand Orders of 10,000 astartes each, and non-combat groups are in Cloisters of varying size (rarely exceeding 1000).

Cloisters are devoted to a specific purpose; maintenance of old equipment, recruiting, intelligence gathering, etc. The bulk of the legion's serfs and Techmarines are in Cloisters at any given time, and a substantial fraction of its Apothecaries. Truly noncombat Cloisters are assembled with little to no regard for Wing composition and are commanded by a senior Chaplain, called the Presiding Abbot; a detachment of other Chaplains provide the remainder of the nominal command structure, though it is rare that their de jure authority is ever exercised. Cloisters are never devoted to battle, but in some cases a special purpose requires skills usually used for combat, and a Cloister is assembled from the Wing whose experts are best suited. In this case the Wing will vote a Commander to preside and vote Lieutenants to serve under them; these titles are most often given based on ordinary rank but experienced line brothers with widely acknowledged expertise may receive the authority instead.

Grand Orders are, other than scale, organized much like orders of other gene-lines. They are led by a Grand Master, with Chapterites leading 1000-man chapters under the Grand Master and Captains leading 100-man companies under each Chapterite. These do not usually have a recruiting pipeline associated with them but otherwise are organized along the usual lines; one or two companies of veterans, four to six battle companies with a mixture of squad types, and two to five reserve companies. Generally each chapter will have one reserve company which is, rather than the usual all-tactical, all-assault, or all-devastator composition, mixed squad types unified by being all of the same Wing. Every Grand Order also has Techmarines to maintain its motor pool, serfs to crew its voidcraft, and Apothecaries to harvest the geneseed of the fallen, outside the main organizational structure. The specialist ranks have substantially more gradations of rank than in ordinary orders, since in a Grand Order there will usually be at least a full company each of Apothecaries, Chaplains, Librarians, Techmarines, and Witchbreakers.

The Wing's specialties are unchanged since the Lion's day, though some have been de-emphasized over the centuries. The Dreadwing specializes in total warfare and unrestricted, unrelenting destruction. The Deathwing is an unbreakable anvil, withstanding any degree of punishment without relenting or retreating. The Firewing is focused on infiltration, counterintelligence, and assaults on enemy command structures. The Ironwing specializes in the armoured column, including mechanized infantry, artillery, and line tanks. The Ravenwing is a fast-moving hammer, mounted on bikes and land speeders to hit wherever the enemy is weakest or force them onto the anvil of the Deathwing. And the Stormwing specializes in breaching operations and Zone Mortalis warfare, later extended to include the breaching of fortresses. Informally, modern Dark Angels refer to the Wings in pairs; the Deathwing and Ravenwing are the 'Dawn Flight', the Stormwing and Ironwing are the 'Noon Flight', and the Dreadwing and Firewing are the 'Dusk Flight'.

### Beliefs

Lion El'Jonson survived the bulk of the Scouring and the First Black Crusade, which meant he was still publicly active at the time when, with the backing and oversight of Constantin Valdor, the Imperial Faith was officially established by the integration of the two largest cults of Emperor-worship in the Imperium; the Temple of the Savior Emperor and the Cult of the Martyr Eternal. While he was noticeably uncomfortable with religion, he was venerated nonetheless. When the great Ork warlord known as The Beast surfaced in M32 and the Lion died destroying him, the Cult faction within the Faith canonized him and made him one of the Faith's most prominently revered martyrs. His sons, whatever their beliefs at the time, recognized a valuable resource when they saw one, and so welcomed the increased support and integration the Faith offered the "Sons of the Martyr" (and privately made amends to the gene-line of Horus, who considered that title rightfully theirs).

By M36, records are fairly clear that all or nearly-all Dark Angels revered the Emperor as a god and their primarch as divinely inspired. They are substantially heterodox in details -- they regard all the loyal primarchs as saints and reject most saints canonized by the Ecclesiarchy -- and place emphasis on their special role the Emperor gave the unimpeachable, undefeatable Dark Angels; nonetheless they are accepted as believers by the Imperial Faith without argument. This leads to their close relationship with the Faith's hierarchy and their garrisons on Shrine Worlds, from which they draw the majority of their recruits. Notably, the legion cult is shared by a substantial minority of Imperial citizens elsewhere, known as the Sectus Angelorum Tenebrum. The Ecclesiarchy has made occasionaly attempts to reeducate its adherents back into line with doctrine, but the First and Last Legion has sufficient influence to squelch these attempts before they find meaningful success.

### Geneseed

There are no known mutations in the Dark Angels geneseed; there are noted tendencies toward secretiveness and insularity, but as these are coupled with brilliant strategic mind echoing the Lion himself, they are considered minor flaws at most.

### Battlecry

"We are His angels!"


	2. Legio II, Name Unknown

All records of the Second and their primarch were purged some time before the end of the Custodianship. What records persist suggest that their primarch was the sixth or seventh found, probably in Segmentum Obscurus. The Space Wolves were sent to destroy a large fighting force of some kind at the command of the Emperor in the late 800s.M30, but the details either went unrecorded or had all their records purged later. It is believed that either Legio II in its entirety, or some remnant of it, was the target; certainly the legion was no longer active by the end of M30.

Why the punishment and the erasure of the records were enacted is unknown. Given that official records, while sparse and restricted-access, document some details about the legions which turned to treason and Dark Gods, this is especially surprising. But even the reason for the censure has been censored, so in His beneficence the Emperor has clearly decreed that it is unwise for mortal, or even Magnificat, scholars to speculate on the matter.


	3. Index Astartes: Legio III, Emperor's Children

### Index Astartes - Emperor's Children/Phoenician's Children/Black Host

### Origin

Unusually among the traitors, the Third Legion's homeworld of Chemos was far from the Warp Rifts they resided in, so when the Great Scouring came to the Chemos sector the planet was subjected to Exterminatus. The survivors of the legion made no attempt to defend it; they had already withdrawn to the Evermaw, and made their new home on a Daemon World known as the Planet of the Phoenix.

However, yoked as they were to Fulgrim's Chaos-blessed soul, when he was destroyed by the Emperor they were hard-hit. Most never regained the intelligence they had possessed before Fulgrim's indoctrination, and few were able to adapt to changing circumstances. When Jaghatai Khan came to the Evermaw to enlist Word Bearers and Ultramarines into his Great Scourge, the Planet of the Phoenix rose against him for daring to take Fulgrim's place as Dark Warmaster. Though they had the blessing of Chaos still upon them from the shattered fragments of Fulgrim's cursed soul in them, they were no match for the Dark Khagan, and he slew them to the last man, cementing his hold as Warmaster and receiving the dark blessings of the gods. The Phoenician's Children were no more, and only one marine of Fulgrim's line survived: Fabius Bile, the Autark, a renegade who escaped the prison he and his many loyal brothers were confined to before Fulgrim returned and converted them to his cause.

While the marines were dead, their legion serfs, wargear, and vehicles were intact. Jaghatai claimed them for his Great Scourge, but when he, too, was defeated, they were fought over. A parley during that fight formed the largest non-legion organization of traitor marines: the Black Host.

At that parley, between arguments over rightful ownership, an unfamiliar figure stood up, in unmarked black armor. He spoke of the shame of defeat in the Heresy War and then again in the Great Scourge, and the hypocrisy and despicableness of the Imperium. He reminded them that they retreated to the Warp Rifts not to fight each other but to prepare to strike back against the Imperium. He then suggested they undertake a collective oath: to set aside all previous allegiance and rivalries in order to prosecute the Long War and destroy the Imperium, and to treat any others who made and kept the same vow as their brothers. Those who took the oath would split the spoils they now fought over evenly amongst themselves.

Not all present took the oath, but most did; a few of the strongest warbands present tried to take a share of the twice-salvaged equipment, but the vow-takers banded together to fight them off. When this was complete, they signified their cutting of ties to their past by painting over their old heraldry, replacing it with empty black fields. In the centuries since, the Black Host has subdivided and most of its warbands added new heraldry; the simplest have the symbol of their favored Chaos God in a single color on a black field, but others grow as complex as melding the heraldry of multiple legions (or, later, orders) that the marines of the warband drew their lineage from. Two things remain constant, though: their heraldry and armor is primarily black, and they stand committed to their vow. From the time of the vow through to the present day, whenever some new warlord demonstrates they have the dark favor of the gods and the vision to carve pieces out of the Imperium, the Black Host assembles again and a Black Crusade begins. The first of these emerged into realspace four centuries after the Great Scourge, led by a marine who used no name, only the title 'Master of Hosts' (and rumoured to be the same man who proposed the Black Vow). Another thousand years later, First Chaplain Erebus of the Word Bearers gathered the Host again and proclaimed the "Third Black Crusade", retroactively claiming the Great Scourge as the first. Eight more have emerged from the Warp in the millennia between then and M40; always, the Black Host is at the forefront

### Homeworld

Chemos was scoured clean, and the Black Host has never claimed any worlds for its own. The old markings of their vehicles and wargear remind them of the cost of pledging fealty to the Dark Gods, and living on a Daemon World without Daemon Princes to protect you is the height of foolishness.

### Combat Doctrine

The Emperor's Children were a small legion of exceedingly skilled specialists, mastering one particular way of war and ingraining it into their soul. The Phoenician's Children were a legion of zealous minions, keeping most of their prior skill but acting more as many limbs of a single beast than as people.

The Black Host has all types. Slaaneshi Peerless, Khornate Wulfen, Tzeentchian Warpfire, Nurglite Wyrmrot: all are represented. They have generalists, specialists, Possessed, Obliterators, Warp Talons, and everything else. They are in some ways the mirror of the Last and First Legion; they wage eternal war against the Imperium, all means merely serving an end.

### Organization

The Children were highly hierarchical, which only increased when they were indoctrinated by the Champion of Chaos United.

The Black Host are not; they are a loose confederation of warbands, with some of those bands hierarchical and other nearly anarchic. They are unified only by their shared vow and the hatred that vow represents. When no Crusade is developing, they fight amongst themselves like any other warband of Chaos, fighting other bands of the Black Host at times but usually attacking others.

### Beliefs

The Black Host believes in staying relatively independent of the Chaos Gods; they may pray to them, but do not pledge their souls. Daemon Princes who have taken the Black Vow are not _entirely_ unknown, but extremely rare.

### Geneseed

The geneseed of the Black Host comes from many sources and is therefore varied, but as most of its members are those who have been serving Chaos for an extended period, it is usually highly mutated.

### Battlecry

The Emperor's and then Phoenician's Children cried "Death to His foes!".

The Black Host prefers "Death to the Corpse Empire!"


	4. Index Astartes: Legio IIII, Iron Sages

### Origins

The Fourth Legion was known from its first deployments as a legion of relentless, remorseless, tireless soldiers, and as experts in attacking fortified positions. They received no official cognomen before the discovery of their primarch, but the informal nickname they bore, the "Corpse Grinders", showed that they were, if anything, _too_ relentless, willing to perservere in near-impossible fights at heavy cost. Perturabo himself had tendencies in that direction, but his friendship with his foster-sister Calliphone partially cured him of it, and on his unitement with his gene-sons, he saw that he needed to push them before they could be cured. His edict was harsh: Prove to him that they could make themselves more than tools for another's will, or suffer decimation annually until they could. Several of his brother-primarchs were appalled by the threat of decimation, but his sons considered it fair. And he judged well; of seven hundred companies who took on the challenge, by the time a year had elapsed only seventeen had failed to devise plans that satisfied the Iron Architect. By the second year, the failures had dropped to one, the 101st company ("Witchbanes"), distinguished veterans of the Compliance of Venus. In the third year, the 101st volunteered for the most dangerous duties in a transparent attempt to die in battle rather than suffer the shame of a third decimation. They got their wish; the 101st were wiped out in the Fall of the Black Judges, their deaths used as opportunity to study the Judges's patterns so that the second wave could wipe them out entirely.

Reinvigorated by the influx of recruits from Olympia and the influx of ideas from the primarch and his challenge, the Fourth, now named the Iron Sages, expanded greatly the range of tasks they took on. Guided by the Iron Architect, they became experts not just in siege-breaking but in fortification, equalling or better the Imperial Fists. They also showed a new and impressive degree of lateral thinking. A notable example was the Compliance of Kharaatan, a megacity-state whose human populace worshipped a coven of Eldar psykers. Under the pretense of direct assaults on the fortifications, the Sages introduced potent hallucinogens into the water supply of the city, disabling the human defenders and causing the Eldar to lose control of their powers and be destroyed by Warp backlash. This backlash also affected the handful of human psykers present, and had substantial casualties, but the Sages took a well-fortified city with almost no losses on their part and few humans killed. They were still given many garrison assignments, but learned to take these as opportunities; bland, simple assignments, yes, but a simple assignment carried out to perfection can still prove the excellence of the men who accomplished it. They frequently did so by rebuilding the fortifications or altering the governmental structure of places they guarded, making them much more easily defended and freeing up most of the garrison to return to the Crusade.

So it continued until Roboute Guilliman declared his secession from the Imperium and the renewed independent Realm of Ultramar. Their primarch would have preferred to be assigned the Praetorian of Terra, but his sons were not particularly opinionated; Vigilus Marchensis creating a galactic-scale defensive line hedging out the Ultramarines was an honor they appreciated. Under his leadership, they designed and constructed the Iron Line from the galactic core to the south-east edge of the Milky Way, not cutting off any of the pre-Crusade Ultramar but preventing it from expanding to the western reaches of Ultima Segmentum. They almost entirely broke off from the Crusade in order to perform this duty, but this was not a disappointment; the Fourth had always appreciated a difficult challenge, and war against fellow astartes on a massive scale was the most challenging task they had ever had. When the first assaults came, they repelled them with ease and used the results to better fortify against the possibility of isolated strong points falling. The attacks on the Line soon faded, leaving as their main legacy within the Sages a sharp bitterness and antagonism toward Ultramar.

When Horus convened peace talks at Prandium, the Sages were the primary dissenting voice. They misliked the Ultramarines and had direct exposure to the degree to which they had atrophied; they considered them, rightly or wrongly, easy to conquer and not worth trying to save. When Horus was murdered, they were the most aggressive voice calling for immediate retribution on the rebels. In the leadership disarray caused by Horus's death and the inaccessibility of the Emperor or Malcador to appoint a new Warmaster, they were unable to secure enough supporters to mount the attack, and the Ultramarines launched frequent probing assaults on the Iron Line to discourage them from leaving their posts to go on the offensive, so this came to naught. However, when Fulgrim requested that his brothers name him Warmaster of Retaliation, they were the most eager volunteers for the Istvaan offensive, and the Iron Line was nearly stripped bare for it.

When that offensive became the Istvaan Massacre, they were therefore one of the most hard-hit. They lost their primarch and four fifths of their legion, with Perturabo's final orders instructing them to use his sacrifice to get their surviving Warsmiths and the primarchs of the Shadow Brotherhood to safety. Through the remainder of the Heresy War, the Warsmiths Triumvirate (Barabbas Dantioch, Volk, and Soltarn Vull Bronn) led the legion, refilling the Iron Line, gathering the garrisons from across the galaxy, and assisting the Imperial Fists in fortifying Sol Sector against the inevitable attack by the traitors.

In the wake of the Heresy War, the legion was split up as the others were. The majority of it was split among the many outposts of the Iron Line, and initially almost no orders were stationed outside it. Over the next few centuries, the Sages spread out, primarily to try to establish a second fortified line in the galactic north but also to fortify several other high-value targets.

### Homeworld

The world of Perturabo's childhood, Olympia, was wiped clean of life by the depredations of the Space Wolves. The Iron Sages left a small order, who call themselves the Hoplites of Verse, which has a Fortress-Monastery placed on Olympia with the grave site of the primarch's foster-sister Calliphone sitting at its heart, open to the sky.

In truth, the homeworld of the legion had already moved on from Olympia before the Heresy War began in earnest. The Iron Line, which extends south-east from the galactic core separating Segmentum Nihilus from Segmentum Tempestus, was the place the Sages were most devoted to, and remains so. Its many worlds and emplacements are home to over half the current Sons of Perturabo, who operate in independent orders but have tight coordination. This leads to them being perpetually under suspicion, but so long as no Sages orders operate closely anywhere outside the Line itself, they are not censured.

The Warsmiths who led the legion during the Heresy War and their successors in the orders after it have attempted to construct a Steel Line to the north of the core, on the boundary between Segmentum Nihilus and Segmentum Obscurus, several times, a project in which they usually also enlist the Sons of Dorn. Most of the emplacements built there endure, but officially the efforts have failed; unofficially, the defensive line has never been strong enough to hold back the traitors, so astartes of all lineages, loyal and traitor, derisively call it the "Tin Line". Still, these efforts have led to the second-largest concentration of Iron Sages orders and marines.

### Combat Doctrine

The Iron Sages have always been masters of fortification above all other skills. They place a high value on being flexible and able to perform well in any domain, but other than a few exceptionally talented individuals, the art of the siege is the place they excel the most. Even when meeting in pitched battle, field fortifications they erect are a pivotal piece of their order of battle. Because of this, their company composition is oriented toward holding positions and fighting from a distance; they have a high density of devastator squads and have a large tank and artillery column which is tight-knit with the tactical line.

### Organization

Virtually every order of Iron Sages descendants is oriented around defending a specific region of space, whether it be a sector, system, planet, or specific high-value location on a planet. Their size therefore ranges widely; the Hoplites of Verse number only 150 marines, whereas the largest order, the Shields of Mortis, who guard the pivotal Mortis sector in the Iron Line, number nearly 10,000.

Because they believe strongly in versatility, the Sages descendants do not generally keep reserve companies of specialists. They are organized in above-strength line companies, nominal strength 120 marines, each with 80 tactical marines, 20 devastators, and 20 assault, with vehicles and specialists associated primarily with a company rather than the order as a whole. They follow the usual training path of Scout -> Devastator -> Assault -> Vehicles -> Tactical for their aspirants, but unlike in more traditional orders every brother who does not hold a specialist rank (e.g. Apothecary) is expected to cycle through the three main specialties at least once per decade, bringing new approaches gained in their usual rank. Even those in command are not excepted; even Captains cycle through the methods of war regularly, shifting their honor guard to match. The sole exception is instructors; teaching is understood to be a valuable and difficult skill, so those who excel at teaching the skills of a certain role remain in that rank to assist initiate brothers in learning the details. These teachers are given the title "Lieutenant-Instructor of [their specialty]". Lieutenant-Instructor usually only leave their post to be promoted to Captain or Chaplain (or by death in battle).

Even specialist ranks are not totally exempt from the emphasis on cross-training. Techmarines spend as much time teaching their brothers how to maintain and operate the motor pool as they do taking care of it. Nartheciums are too rare to distribute, but apothecaries nonetheless train every brother of the order in how to triage wounds the Larraman cells are not healing, treat what things can be treated, and how to preserve the pieces of bodies which contain progenoids in case a brother dies without an apothecary available. Librarians and Witchbreakers spend less time on cross-training; they share the duties of teaching recognition and resistance of psychic powers. Chaplains, or Dialogators, have no such additional responsibility; their instructional duties are limited to the training of future Dialogators and the private debate and counseling they undertake with all brothers.

### Beliefs

The beliefs of the Sages were among the most affected by the arrival of their primarch. Previously they had been known as stolid and unimaginative but determined. Under Perturabo's leadership, they were reshaped into independent thinkers practiced in devising new approaches on the fly for whatever challenges they faced. Those senior captains and order masters who show extreme aptitude for creative thinking and revising plans on the fly are granted the title of 'Warsmith', and it is generally agreed that an order which lacks a Warsmith to command it is derelict in their duty to the primarch's legacy; leaving a Warsmith subordinate to a brother who lacks the title is considered tantamount to heresy.

In line with this emphasis on free thought, though they pay respect to chapter heroes of old and, especially, read the works of philosophy and strategy written by past Warsmiths, the Sages and their descendants do not have a unified chapter cult. Their Dialogators do not lead them in rites, but serve as counselors, debating with them and ensuring that they neither stagnate nor fall to treason. Dialogators have earned the animosity of the Imperial Faith by their refusal to enforce veneration of the Emperor, so they do not have access to Rosariuses common to other Chaplains. However, they have friendly relations with the Adeptus Mechanicus, so they have refraction field generators made in the form of a winged thunderbolt, mixing symbols of the Emperor from early and late in his reign, which they wear in place of the rosarius. Chaplains do still fight in battle with their crozius arcanum; the Sages agree that while repeating empty ritual would be against the primarch's wishes, waging war for humanity was holy in his eyes.

### Geneseed

Psychologically, the Iron Sages gene-line is known for amazing feats of memory, intelligence, and rapid problem-solving skills, but also for paranoia, callousness, nursing grudges, and reacting harshly to perceived slights. Physically, the neuroglottis has been lost, and the haemastamen and Larraman's organ are malfunctioning in a way that leads to increased toughness of the skin but also extensive scarring and numbness. The remaining organs are in good condition, and the Inquisitives have not raised issue with their genetic purity.

### Battlecry

"Iron Within, Iron Without!", usually in a call-response form, is used at the outset of battle. To reinforce their resolve later in the conflict, they are more likely to chant one of their two litanies.

_The Iron Litany_: "From Iron cometh Strength. From Strength cometh Will. From Will cometh Faith. From Faith cometh Honor. From Honor cometh Iron." This is honored as the death-chant of the primarch on the killing field of Istvaan V, and was introduced by him earlier in his tenure in command. It was known as the Unbreakable Litany in his day, and renamed only after the second litany was composed.

_The Steel Litany_: "From Steel cometh Power. From Power cometh Duty. From Duty cometh Life. From Life cometh Sacrifice. From Sacrifice cometh Steel." This was written by Poet-Apothecary Soulaka in order to better capture the spirit of the primarch's sacrifice on Istvaan V in the years after it. When it came to the attention of the Warsmiths Triumvirate, they approved, and so it was enshrined in legion culture by the end of the Heresy War. Soulaka is also credited with the litanies's names; the Steel Litany for the new, and the Iron Litany for the old. Soulaka was later one of the legion's first Dialogators, and his writings are required reading among trainees for that role.


	5. Index Astartes: Legio V, White Scars

### Origins

The legion later known as the White Scars was called the Star Hunters before the finding of their primarch. They were even at that time a wide-ranging force, conducting long campaigns far from supply lines, hunting down foes mercilessly. They were often overlooked, but did not mind it; they enjoyed the chase and the fight for their own sakes, and duty was more important than recognition.

When Chogoris was found, Jaghatai Khan was pleased with what he saw, but he reshaped the legion regardless. The largest changes were in tactical doctrine; while the Star Hunters ranged widely, they fought mainly as conventional infantry. The newly rechristened White Scars stayed ever in motion on the battlefield, raiding and retreating, even the armoured column changed to favor speed over durability. They adopted the rituals and rites of Chogoris, and most Terran marines took new "war-names" to reflect the change in culture.

The first step on the road to damnation for the Scars was the Compliance of Davin. The fight was short but brutal, and it was the opinion of the Iterators that the tribes of the planet would not respond well to overtures that did not come from respected warriors. To that end, a company of Scars stayed behind to bring them into compliance, where they were ceremonially inducted into the Tiger Lodge, one of the many warrior lodges of the planet's culture. They successfully swayed the populace to support the emperor as the greatest of star-warriors, and recruitment for the Imperial Army on the planet became and remained high. The company then returned to their legion, where they asked permission from the primarch to continue the practice of warrior lodges with their brothers. He saw no harm in it, so permission was granted, and the "Stallion Lodge" became a Scars tradition. Unknown to even those who brought it to the legion, the practices of warrior lodges were grounded in Chaos worship, and even without the religious beliefs which had accompanied them on Davin the taint slowly corrupted those who joined the Stallion Lodge.

Always overlooked for unclear reasons, Jaghatai formed close relationships only with Horus, Magnus, and Mortarion. The Scars were not involved in the Ullanor Campaign, so the Khagan heard of Horus's elevation and Magnus's departure only after the fact, with mixed feelings about each since it was an honor that nonetheless meant he would not see his favorite brothers. His bond with Mortarion was little comfort either; they had bonded over their shared role as outriders expanding the edges of the Imperium, but other than the Ullanor campaign and the Rangdan Xenocides, campaigns which required two full legions were essentially unknown. This left the Khan isolated and disconnected from the greater Crusade.

The second step was Nikea. Since Magnus remained on Terra, Jaghatai was the most psychically potent primarch in attendance, and of those present only Malcador exceeded him in psychic power. As Malcador presided over the proceedings and arguments, he noticed something disturbing; a dark taint in Malcador's soul, faint but close to the core of his being. Seeing this rottenness, he therefore interpreted Malcador's Sanction as a power grab by an untrustworthy lackey. While his stormseers respected the judgment and largely opted to swear to the Sanction rather than give up their powers, the Khan himself felt mainly disillusionment.

The final step that pushed the Scars to damnation was initiated, as it was for many others, by First Chaplain Erebus of the Word Bearers. Horus had been murdered at Prandium in mysterious circumstances, and Erebus came to the Khagan, who he had divined was bitter and disillusioned, and revealed that he had determined that it was Malcador who was responsible, because the murder weapon was a foul xenos blade called an anathame, and Erebus knew Malcador to have taken. (This determination was much simpler to reach than he let on, for it was Erebus who had given Malcador the Chaos-tainted anathame, and he had done so specifically to ensure this murder came to pass.) With this proof presented, the Khan was incensed, and gathered his favored Stormseers and Erebus to hunt down the Sigillite. When they finally caught him, they unleashed their rage on him, delivering unequalled torments. Erebus used these sadistic actions to fuel a disguised ritual, amplifying their rage and corrupting their hearts the more they tortured him. When they finally examined his mind to see whether he had been induced to sufficient shame and regret, they found that he was a vegetable, no longer conscious in any real sense. Disgusted, they entrusted the body to Erebus for disposal and returned to their legion with bitter anger at the Emperor for allowing such a corrupt figure at his right hand.

With the groundwork in the rank and file laid by the Stallion Lodge, and the corruption sunk deep into the leadership by the ravaging of Malcador, the Scars were easily convinced to defect. A few months later, when a messenger from the Word Bearers came to Jaghatai suggesting they break away and meet Vulkan and Guilliman in the Istvaan system to form an alliance against the Imperium, the Scars were happy to oblige.

In the wake of the Heresy War, Jaghatai was the only surviving traitor primarch not to achieve daemonhood. He did not wish to bow to any god, regretting bowing to the Emperor and resolving to stand on his own. When the Four began to fight over the body of Rogal Dorn, it was Jaghatai who formed the compromise that saw him reforged into a peerless weapon of war by the Forge of Souls. This effort brought him into favor with all four Chaos Gods, and he capitalized on this favor to gather together astartes from the warring legions under his leadership as a new Warmaster. After destroying the last remnants of the Phoenician's Children, he sought the blessings of the Four and was granted them, and his White Scars made up the core of his Great Scourge, a wide-ranging campaign of terror and destruction which reminded the Imperium that despite their victory in the Heresy War and their reconquest of much of the galaxy, the traitors were as great a threat as ever. The assembled loyal primarchs were eventually able to deceive and then corner Jaghatai, and, at the cost of two primarch's lives and the crippling of a third, they were able to kill him.

The rest of the Scourge fled back to the Immaterium when their Warmaster was killed, but his legion did not. The Scars wreaked destruction for decades in retaliation for their loss, and ever since have been quick to answer to the call of any who establish themselves as Dark Warmaster and call a Black Crusade.

### Homeworld

The world of the Khan's youth, Chogoris, was the home of his legion in their days of loyalty and the first century after the Heresy War. However, as the Imperium expanded through the twice-conquered territories, reintegrating them into the Imperium, it became clear that Chogoris was too far from the Eye and the Maw to be kept safe. The entire mass of the White Scars fleet descended on the steppes of Chogoris, telling the tribesmen that their once-king, Jaghatai, had been betrayed by his brothers, and they now intended to wipe out both the Scars and the tribes and let the hated Palatine king retake the planet. Over the course of months, the steppes were emptied and the tribesmen and their horses loaded aboard the ships.

It was less than two years after their evacuation was complete that the fleets of the Scouring arrived in the system. The planet still showed life signs as strong as ever, and so, as with Chemos a few years earlier, the commanding officer decreed Exterminatus on it. In the Scar's final jape, this destroyed only those most hostile to the Khan, wiping out the Palatinians and leaving the now-absent Chogorians untouched.

Fitting with their nomadic culture, after the evacuation of the Chogorians the White Scars acquired not one homeworld but many. They consider Segmentum Nihilus, the space between the Eye and the Maw, to be their territory first and foremost, and range widely across it, setting down on any world which had a settled population to raid and an environment suited for the steppe tribes and leaving a portion of the Chogorians to settle it. (Most often these were raiding other humans, but occasionally their prey was Exodite Eldar or some more exotic xenos culture.) They claimed two small, wandering Daemon Worlds; one in the Eye of Terror called "Outrider", and one in the Maw called "Everstorm". Their main presence in each Warp Rift, however, is their fleet, which serve as the main ferrymen between the Immaterium and Materium.

### Combat Doctrine

The White Scars believe in constant motion and opportunistic strikes. They virtually always deploy mounted on bikes or in transports modified for extra speed, and a White Scars attack in one place always heralds attacks in several others, whether on the same planet, other planets in the system, or other systems nearby. Before their fall, the White Scars used their mobility and speed to harry and wear down superior forces before dealing the killing blow. As traitors, it's nearly unheard of for them to fight a force that can withstand them; they prefer to divide their forces and the enemy's, conquer where they can and retreat where they cannot. They pillage, take slaves and plunder, then destroy what remains and conduct dark rituals to corrupt the ruins.

The White Scars are among the most dangerous of traitor legions, because they are immensely flexible. They contain contingents of devotees to every major and minor chaos power, but are not beholden to any of the gods' dictates. They greatly desire the ruination and destruction of the Imperium, but are self-interestedly fickle, unlikely to be tempted into a trap by the opportunity to do great harm to the loyalists. They are not run by a dictator, but maintain strong bonds of loyalty and comradery which make them unified than any other traitor legion save the fanatics of the Word Bearers. They are, in short, exceedingly intelligent, and therefore dangerous, opponents.

### Organization

The Scars are divided into dozens or hundreds of warbands, which they usually call 'tribes', virtually all of which are raiders and plunderers through Segmentum Nihilum and beyond. Most Scars go through the motions of worship for the Four but show real reverence for none of them; therefore a majority of warbands are independent of the Chaos Gods. However, each has warbands of their devotees; Khornate tribes laugh as they harvest skulls, Slaaneshi tribes chase wealth and luxury and the sensations of ever-greater speed, Tzeentchian tribes fly through the air and leave anarchy in their wake, and Nurglite tribes are ever-spreading plague vectors for the Grandfather. Even among the unaligned, large tribes usually have specialist contingents of each god within them; Stormseers who follow Tzeentch, terminator companies in Nurgle's service, Raptors who kill for Khorne, and extreme thrillseekers with Slaanesh's blessing. There are even some small contingents, usually heavy weapons specialists, who join the Death Guard in serving the nihilistic Malal.

Despite their division into tiny bands, the Scars retain substantial loyalty to their legion; Scars warbands of rival gods will rarely fight each other. When Jaghatai called his Great Scourge (later called the First Black Crusade), his legion answered enthusiastically. When he was killed in battle, they continued the fight after all others had fled. They are not bound to him as Fulgrim's sons were to him, but loyalty to primarch and legion is deeply felt nonetheless. Accordingly, few Scars have been willing to swear the Vow of the Black Host, which entails swearing to place the Long War above all other loyalties. They are, however, the most reliable allies the Host has outside its ranks. The Scars who serve as ferrymen in the Eye and Maw see and work with every aspiring Warmaster, quietly inspecting and judging him. If they decide that an aspiring Warmaster's efforts are a worthy Black Crusade, these ferrymen will put out the call to their raiding brothers. When that call goes out, Scars from across Segmentum Nihilus will flock to the nascent Black Crusade's banner and thousands upon thousands of raiders will set aside the pursuit of plunder and trophies for single-minded infliction of destruction and terror.

### Beliefs

The White Scars always considered themselves the raiders and campaigners on the fringes of humanity, destroying the unworthy to further the cause. Their cause has changed, but this has not; they still hold themselves aloof and operate far from allied support. Following the last wishes of the Khagan, they devote themselves to the destruction of the Imperium; their allegiance to Chaos is, for the most part, entirely in service to this goal.

The Scars consider themselves the 'Scourge of Gods'; the strong sent against the cowardly to punish them for their failure and weakness. In their view, they are the greatest of astartes, because they accept no constraints from any but their brothers; not the yoke of the Imperium and the Corpse-Emperor, not the dictates of the Four, and not the nihilistic zealotry of Malal. They are (in their view) everywhere and nowhere, the true masters of the galaxy. 

### Geneseed

As they spend the most time outside the Warp Rifts and mostly stay aloof from the patronage of the Gods, the White Scars have the purest geneseed of the traitor legions and comparatively few mutants. The only organs known to be lost are the preomnor and omophagea, though many others may be nonfunctional on a case-by-case basis. While simple mutations are uncommon in the White Scars, obsession-warped marines like Warp Talons and Obliterators are prevalent. The most common of these 'monsters' are the Pulkan, those whose legs have merged with their bikes and now ride centaur-like; the most monstrous of these are daemonic in mind as well as body and can open small Warp rifts to teleport across the battlefield to chase down their prey.

### Battlecry

"For the Khagan and ruin!" or "Ride, ride for the world's ending!"


	6. Index Astartes: Legio VI, Space Wolves

### Origins

Of all the traitors, none are quite as feared by loyal astartes as the Bloody Russ. But this was not always true. Leman Russ was the second primarch discovered by the Emperor and was fiercely and savagely loyal to him, which did not begin to ebb until very late in the Crusade.

Russ landed in the wilds of an icy Death World near the Eye of Terror, Feral in culture, named Fenris. Despite its hostility, he lived alone for a year, scavenging, scrounging, and then hunting his meals. One day a new type of creature passed him, looking more like himself than anything else he had seen. He stalked them and watched as they brought down a mighty elk with sharpened branches and a brightly-glinting material.

After imitating their weaponry and bringing a peace offering of his kill, he met the tribed, to their great confusion and his. Over the cooked meat shared between them, they began to build rapport and communication, and within weeks he had learned to speak their languages and become a valued expert of the tribe. So it was that he was named Leman, "cleverness", by their king, Thegir of the Russ. Though he integrated himself well and was respected by all as a fine thinker and the finest of warriors, he always looked and acted more bestial than his fellows, with fang-like teeth, dense hair across his body, and a strong taste for raw meat. When Thengir named him his preferred successor, few were surprised and fewer still would express it.

When the Emperor came, proclaiming himself Leman’s father and liege, he scoffed at the claim and challenged him to many contests, in which the stranger equalled the king repeatedly. Finally, he challenged him to an unarmed duel to first blood. Though it lasted a night and a day, neither landed an attack. Finally, though, the stranger's speed and endurance proved decisive; Leman made a too-desperate attack, and the stranger turned the claws of one hand against the other arm. Growling with frustration Leman clawed at the stranger’s face, but found that his hand bounced off as if it had hit armor. Seizing his arm, the stranger pointed: a small puncture sat, slowly oozing blood. Frustration turned to laughter, and the primarch knelt, saying where all could hear, "Father, well met, and thank you for the best fight I have had in years."

For several decades he fought loyally for his father, inducting brothers of Fenris as his marines. His recruiting was always marred by the Canis Helix, the runaway mutation that, like that which gave him his claws and fangs, mutated his legion, often not just into bestial men but into enormous wolves. Many of these escaped, and Fenrisian wolves became the terror of the tribes; smart as a clever child, twice as stealthy, strong as bears, and fiercer than cornered badgers. The primarch and his sons were, however, prone to outbursts of bestial rage, sometimes even unable to distinguish friend from foe (though their own legion, who smelled like family, they never turned on). These grew more frequent and more serious after the times his legion was called to cleanse worlds of traitors, especially after the two incidents in the 900s.M30 which historians believe were the times where the 2nd and 11th legiones astartes were culled for reasons unrecorded.

As those culls took place, the legion grew more insular and resentful of others who did not share their bloody duty as executioners, as well as suspicious of manipulators and, particularly so of psykers. (Why this is true is unknown, but may relate to the nature of the crimes for which Legio II and XI were exterminated.) When Nikea came, Russ was ill-satisfied with Malcador’s Sanction and loudly proclaimed his beliefs that Malcador could not be trusted and that several legions, particularly the Thousand Sons, were flouting his rules. (Time would ultimately prove him correct in both respects, though it is believed that the only hard evidence he had on either front was from his Rune Priests, who were transparently ignoring those rules themselves.)

Lorgar and Vulkan, already sworn to Chaos by this time, fanned the flames of this suspicion to turn him and his legion against the emperor, promising him that if they provided just a little more of the bloody work his wolves were bred for, they would ensure a purge of psykers and sorcerers. This was in truth a trick; by working with Chaos and engaging in the wholesale slaughter of innocents they requested - decimating the civilian populations of the loyal legions’ homeworlds and annihilating their marine garrisons - he was ensuring that the Blood God Khorne could devour his heart and those of his marines. By the time he had completed most of the assigned task, he and his legion were already half-fallen, and had grown bestial far faster than ever before. Finally, he went beyond his orders, taking picked elite and requesting volunteers for a final cleansing, wiping out the witch-scum of Prospero.

As his battle-barge of veterans and favored sons exited the Warp in the Prosperan system, a final transformation overcame all of them; on a wave of bloodlust, a howl was taken up on every deck and in every cabin, and as they flew through the transition they emerged as half-man, half-wolf Wulfen. In the ensuing assault, they lost all semblance of decency and honor, setting cities ablaze and tearing apart all they met in a frenzy of blood and hatred, the psychic assaults of the psykers (both marine and civilian) shrugged off like rainfall. As he personally approached Tizca and the headquarters of the legion, Russ completed the Khornate ritual and his bloodlust gained total control over his mind. He ascended as the Daemonwulf, a Daemon Prince of Khorne. At this moment, everywhere across the galaxy every Wolf of the Rout felt an irrestible urge to let out a long, hungry howl. As they gave their battle cry, they felt the sympathetic connection to their Legion brothers, and as that spread and deepened the curse of the Wulfen took hold. A few remained resistant, not following their brothers into madness and corruption, but the new Wulfen felt a fit of rage come upon them, and this time their unchanged brothers did _not_ smell like family. Every loyal son of Russ was slain that day, most too quickly to understand what had happened to their brothers.

### Homeworld

As with the other traitor legions, the Dogs of Khorne have retained their traditional homeworld of Fenris, outside the Eye of Terror, and taken a Daemon World as a secondary homeworld, theirs a planet within the Eye called Bloodsnow. The culture of Fenris is nearly identical to what it was during the Great Crusade; they worship their traditional gods and view the superbeings who inhabit the Fang as "Valkyria", choosers of the slain who bring warriors with them to fight by the side of the gods. This is intentional; despite their fall, the Space Wolves hold tight to their traditional beliefs and Russ himself considers protecting Fenris as it was to be a sacred duty, the one matter on which he remains capable of refusing Khorne. About a third of the legion's loyal strength lairs in the Fang and launches their raids from it.

Bloodsnow is the home of about a fifth of the legion's original strength, almost always including the Daemonwulf himself. Fenrisian myth tells that great warriors will be brought to the mead halls of Allfather just before their death, there to drink and fight and die and rise again every day until the end of the world. Bloodsnow is a sadistic perversion of those myths; those who die will rise again, but more and more bestial and in more and more pain every time they rise. And those who too often disappoint the Blood God by dying without spilling enough blood may cease to rise, or may have their body rise intact but with an ambitious Bloodletter puppeting the shell which was once a marine.

### Beliefs

The Vlka Fenryka keep to almost the same beliefs they had as loyalists. Reverence for the "Allfather" is replaced with allegiance to the Bloodfather, Wolf Priests are now called Skull Priests, and they no longer pride themselves on loyalty to any but their pack or on being 'true-hearted'. They still consider themselves just executioners, but their view of justice has been warped; now they consider anything that smells like weakness or witchcraft to be a sin and its just penance slaughter.

Despite the Blood God's hatred of psykers and sorcery, the Rune Priesthood is alive and well within the modern Space Wolves. Their runes are now painted in blood and their 'prayers' forgo the storms of old Fenris for savage strength, unearthly toughness, and profane blessings on those baptised in blood. They do still summon "wolf spirits" who charge into the fray and devour the unwary, though despite their persistent claims that those they summon are "Freki and Geri, the primarch's den-siblings", educated outsiders recognize them as Flesh Hounds, half-seen in shadowy silhouette.

### Combat Doctrine

As they have always preferred and as Khorne desires, the Space Wolves prefer to charge into the fray and rip apart their enemies with roaring chainaxes and tearing claws. They do still make use of firearms, but rather than bolt, las, or flamer, they favor shrapnel-heavy frag missiles and shorter-range frag cannons, the better to spill blood for Khorne from a distance. The increased strength of the Wulfen means that they can comfortably carry a frag cannon, usually a vehicle-mounted weapon, on their own, but as this slows down their charge into melee, it is usually relegated to punishment details (Long Fang packs) or on Wulf Champions who are even stronger and so can keep up with their pack while weighed down. Those without frag cannons enter battle with a usual complement of grenades, a bolt pistol, and a 'Bloodblesser pistol': a one-handed, one-shot explosive launcher with approximately the same effective range as a bolter, usually loaded with a rocket-propelled frag grenade but occasionally a thermobaric grenade when they expect that they will need to force cowards out of fortified positions.

### Organization

The Space Wolves have maintained a reasonable degree of legion unity through the centuries. Many warbands are led by an individual Wolf Lord and raid independently, but the pack fights among itself only when no other enemies can be found, and when Russ calls his sons to arms, the Vlka Fenryka answer promptly and without complaint.

Most warbands have fifty to three hundred Wulfen-astartes, plus up to a quarter of that in thunderwolves. Even the smallest warbands have a five-man squad of Long Fangs or some artillery, with the largest being the most organized and better retaining the equipment needed to spill blood from a distance. The garrison of the Fang has the most abundant long-range weaponry and most of the legion's Brass Priests (techmarines), who maintain the ground-to-void defenses of the fortress and thereby ensure Fenris is protected. Millennia of repairs which valued preserving their ability to spill blood for Khorne over lethality and stopping power has left these defenses much less effective than they were in the Emperor's day, but they are still deadly and keep Fenris more protected than any other traitor homeworld outside the Daemon Worlds.

### Gene-Seed

Even before their fall to Chaos, Space Wolf geneseed was notoriously unstable, causing animalistic features in all and degeneration into beasts in many. Since the Sack of Prospero, the entire legion has become 'Wulfen', half-human creatures with berserk fury and savage strength. New recruits implanted with gene-seed still sometimes degenerate into beasts, known as thunderwolves, and those that stay human-like become Wulfen like their elders. However, beyond this endemic mutation, the Canis Helix has stayed remarkably stable through the centuries and millennia in the Eye of Terror.

### Warcry

"Blood for the Bloodfather!" or a feral howl


	7. Index Astartes: Legio VII, Imperial Fists

### Origins

The first Imperial Fists, recruits to the Legio VII, were drawn from all across Terra Herself, but especially from the Europite tribes. These early recruits had a tradition of honor duels and meticulous care for their weapons and other possessions, following the ancient Prussic code of the Junker. They were one of the later legions to be formed, and Rogal Dorn one of the earlier primarchs to be found, so they were reunited with their gene-father faster than any other legion save the Luna Wolves. The Junker code meshed well with Dorn's sensibilities, so it was more merged with the rites of Inwit than replaced by them; his main change was to emphasize humility and service, replacing the noted pridefulness of the Terran Seventhers.

The specialties of the Imperial Fists in the Great Crusade was to act as a hammer or an anvil. They built fortifications everywhere they went, and were notorious for being immovable when they had had time to dig in. The 'hammer' role was when another legion or the Imperial Army had probed the defenses and tactics of an enemy force; the Fists would analyze these defenses and hit them with a relentless, irrestible set of pinpoint strikes.

After Ullanor, when Ultramar announced its secession from the Imperium, the Fists returned to Terra, where they built the Imperial Palace into a great fortress and reorganized the defenses of the planet, system, and sector to secure it further. Before they had finished, the word of the Istvaan Accord reached Terra, and with a heavy heart Rogal Dorn gave the orders to cover the beauty of the palace and ground the floating cities in the sky above Terra to make room for further fortification; with the renegades organized, it was far too likely that war would come to Terra, and the system would need to be impregnable to resist it. As their preparations neared completion, on the urging of Magnus, Dorn took a few of his most trusted captains and traveled to an unknown system, to fortify that place as much as he could manage. The legion broadly were never told where; only First Captain Sigismund, given operational command of the Sol system in Dorn's absence, knew that Dorn was to fortify a location where the Emperor had magnified his powers, and where Magnus feared a traitorous primarch might do the same. Even he was not told the location.

The Fists had solidified the defenses of the subsector and were awaiting his return while building up the broader sector defenses when they heard of the Istvaan Atrocity. Fulgrim, 'Warmaster of Retaliation', was in league with the traitors; Perturabo was dead, his legion shattered, and the Raven Guard, Night Lords, and Chained Hounds with it. The Word Bearers, Emperor's Children, Reforged, and Hydra had struck them from behind, slaughtering them. They grimly redoubled their efforts; no one was above suspicion, and the defenses would need to stand against half the legions. Their primarch's absence was felt sharply, but they knew he was on an important task for the Emperor, and so while they anxiously awaited his return, they would not put their construction on hold for it.

And a good thing, too, for it never came. Long years of fortifying and waiting passed, and Dorn and his squad did not return. The Sons of Horus returned to Terra and integrated into the defensive strategy, the scattered remnants of the Iron Sages gathered and added to the defensive spheres the Fists already had in place, and there was no word of Dorn. The Blood Angels were recovered on Chthonia and brought to Terra, and still there was no word. The traitor fleet entered the Sol Sector and elements of the Hydra emerged from hiding to defend against them, and there was still no word.

The Emperor died, and there was still no word.

To fail in their duty to the Emperor was a crushing blow. To have no gene-father to look to for leadership in the wake of it was another. Lion El'Jonson, seeing this distress, suggested to the Imperial Vestige that, since the Custodes were being repurposed into the new custodial orders, the Imperial Fists could take their place manning the defenses of the palace and Terra. The edict of dissolution complicated this, but ultimately it was accepted in most respects; the Fists were split into five, with the smallest, headed by Huscarl Kestros, keeping the Imperial Fists name and defending Terra and Sol. Nominally, they remain led by Rogal Dorn; Kestros's title was 'Custodian of the Imperial Fists', a title his successors have also used. When the High Lords of Terra were established, the Custodian was given a seat on it; there he is "Lord Custodian", and considered to represent the entirety of the Adeptus Astartes.

Though Sigismund was left in command for the Siege of Terra and offered leadership of the Fists, he refused. He wished to continue the fight to punish the traitors, and so insisted on taking the most dangerous duty; leading the Onyx Fists, the Emperor's champions in the lawless Segmentum Nihilus. 

### Homeworld

Before the discovery of Dorn and Inwit, the homeworld of the Imperial Fists was Terra Herself; after their discovery, Inwit was the primary home of the legion and the Phalanx a secondary home. After the Heresy War, since Inwit was destroyed by the Space Wolves, the Imperial Fists proper again made Terra their home. The Phalanx, however, was no longer theirs; Custodian Kestros gave it to Sigismund and the Onyx Fists, a great portable fortress for the most harrowing of crusades. The remaining orders are fleet-based, boasting the largest battle-barges of any orders, patrolling the reaches of space in defense of the Imperium.

### Combat Doctrine

The Fists are inclined to fortification by nature, and fight best on the defensive even when not fortified. Deflecting and dividing the charge of a less-disciplined attacker is a specialty, and it's common for traitor warbands engaging the Fists on open battlefields to suddenly discover, just as they thought their attacks were penetrating the enemy lines, that they have become scattered and disconnected while they weren't paying close attention, and the Fists are destroying the isolated pockets one by one. If the enemy is fortified, they deploy sappers and sortie toward weak points, or less commonly destroy the buildings with large-scale explosives. If not, the Fists will advance in formation, either in transports or on foot, firing steadily as they move to close quarters.

While they do not exclusively prefer close quarters, it is generally their preference when not fortified. Precision bolter fire is considered well and good when the position is right, but determination and skill, two qualities the sons of Dorn have in great measure, are the traits which win close quarters combat. The Onyx Fists and their crusading offshoots, heirs of Sigismund, are known to be the most emphatic in their preference for fighting at blade's length, while the Terran line displays this the least. Other orders fall in between, with those who spend more time emplaced in fortifications favoring the holy bolter and those who are more often on crusade preferring the blade.

### Organization

Though they conform to the codified norms in most respects, the usual division of line brothers and specialists in the Fists successors is unusual. In a battallion of ten companies, the first company will be veterans, as normal. Five will be composed of tactical marines, some with one to three squads of Scouts attached for reconaissance and training purposes and the rest with no specialists at all; these are called the 'Shield Companies'. The remaining four will be mixed; thirty to forty assault marines, thirty to forty devastators, and thirty outriders (tactical marines who specialize in deployment on bikes and/or land speeders). These mixed-specialist groups are called the 'Sword Companies'. This division comes from the duality of Fists combat doctrine; the Shield are best equipped for holding fortifications, and the Sword for taking the offensive, guaranteed to have the tools to hit the crucial cornerstone of the enemy lines, whatever it may be.

On a larger scale, the Gemmed Fists proper (the original four; Onyx, Ruby, Emerald, and Sapphire), which rarely pause from crusading, have tight bonds with their successor orders. While the crusading orders do recruit as they can, they outsource most of their recruiting to their fixed-position successors. The orders who guard specific positions do not fight as often, and so they are easily able to stay well over nominal strength if recruiting at a normal pace. They do so, and when they grow too far above their norm, they dispatch a strike cruiser toward the last known location of their crusading parent order, usually crewed with a few squads from their veteran company(s) and the remainder drawn from the line brothers of their other companies. When one of these cruisers arrives, or when high casualties necessitate seeking out an emplaced order for reinforcements, the crusading order integrates their cousin marines as brothers. In this way, each of the Gemmed Fists is a composite of the best of their successors and has experts in a wide variety of environments, foes, and strategies.

### Beliefs

The Imperial Fists legion were characterized from their creation by a rigid code of honor. Before the finding of Rogal Dorn, they were known as a prideful legion, quick to respond to perceived slights with a challenge to an honor duel; while the sense of honor remained after Dorn reorganized them and populated them from the sons of Inwit, he successfully inculcated an ethos of duty and self-sacrifice which moderated the proud nature of the legion beforehand. This lionization of self-sacrifice frequently extended to the point of martyrdom; whether this was part of Dorn's intention is unclear, but it only intensified after he disappeared during the Heresy War and his sons subsequently failed to protect the Emperor during the Siege of Terra.

While the honor and intense devotion are common to all sons of Dorn, the other beliefs of the various successor orders of the Imperial Fists vary greatly. The Order of Imperial Fists, guardians of Terra, have a very personal relationship with the Emperor and are among the least martial of astartes. The Onyx Fists and most of their successor orders are devout believers in the Imperial Faith and burn with hatred for traitors and abominations, strong since their inception and only magnified by their millennia of fighting deep within enemy territory, patrolling Segmentum Nihilus. The Emerald, Ruby, and Sapphire Fists lie in between, crusaders with a strong martyr complex but not as self-destructive as the Onyx or as passive as the Imperial.

### Geneseed

The Betcher's gland and Sus-an membrane of the Fists geneseed had broken down even in Dorn's day, but despite this early degradation the remainder of the gene-seed is pure and stable. Few new orders are created from the line of Dorn, but the crusading Gemmed Fists have sprouted many successor orders. They periodically request that the High Lords return portions of the gene-seed stockpiles to them in order to bolster their numbers after depleting them with the founding of new orders; most of these requests are denied, but a substantial fraction are granted.

### Battlecry

"Shields of the Emperor! Swords of Dorn!"


	8. Index Astartes: Legio VIII, Night Lords

### Origins

The Night Lords librarians divide their legion's history into five eras. The Founder's Era is the time before the discovery of Konrad Curze. In this time, the Eighth Legion was formed from the boys born in the largest prisons of Terra; raised in violence and darkness, they were strong, hardy, and merciless, if pale and sickly. These "Sons of Night" made ideal recruits, and the legion they made up was vicious and unscrupulous, though not, as a rule, cruel or sadistic. They displayed little regard for honor or glory, and were used accordingly; when a world displeased the Emperor but not so far that he dictated its execution, the punishment was delivered by the Sons of Night.

The second era is the Haunter's Era. This begins when Konrad Curze, the Night Haunter, was reunited with his legion. The terror tactics and deliberate, showy use of excessive force which he had embodied on Nostramo became integrated into the military doctrine of his legion, and they took the new name Night Lords by his command.

The third era is the Brothers' Era. This began when Curze, at Vulkan's urging, returned to Nostramo and witnessed the return to corruption it had made in his absence. It is named the Brothers' Era chiefly for Corvus Corax and the Shadow Brotherhood, the guide and partnership which led the Night Lords into moderating their indiscriminate campaigns of terror into surgical use of fear that could shape their wake into a healthy obedience. The younger brothers, Alpharius and Omegon, also joined the Shadow Brotherhood in this era, and so they too are its namesake. Secondary in importance in the Night Lord's histories of this era is the abandonment of Nostramo. Corax suggested that as long as Nostramo was associated with his legion, its collapse would haunt Curze, and so for the good of his legion and himself he should give it up to another piece of the Imperium. The Mechanicum took possession and remade it into a Mining and Forge World for the remainder of the Great Crusade.

The fourth era is the Traitor's Era. This begins either when Horus was assassinated, or when the Istvaan Massacre ripped apart the Shadow Brothers. It ends not when the Siege of Terra was lifted, but when Jaghatai Khan's Great Scourge was defeated at the cost of the lives of Konrad Curze, the crippling of Corax, and the probable death of Omegon. 

The fifth era is the Sons' Era. This is by far the longest, and it covers all the time from the death of Curze to the present day. It is the era where the Night Lords are led not by the Night Lord himself but by his sons. There is hope that one day their primarch will return to them, coalesced from the shadows at last to save the imperium when his skills are most needed. No member of his legion was present at the time of his death; only Dark Angels witnessed it. Therefore, they do not entirely believe his death was true.

### Homeworld

Since the Brother's Era, the Night Lords have had no homeworld. During the Night of the Wolf, Nostramo was attacked despite it no longer being their claimed homeworld. The Space Wolves crashed Nostramo's moon into the planet below; the Mechanicum reestablished mining operations on it after the Heresy War, but as a Penal World.

The various successor orders of the Lords recruit from the underhive gangs and prison populations of Hive Worlds from across the Imperium. In dire need, they may recruit from the prisons of Civilized or Feudal Worlds, but they consider that the correct mindset for their tactics is only found in those who fight desperate struggles in dense populations. Feral Worlds, while they produce strong, tough recruits highly prized by other orders, harden their people by conflict with beasts and hazardous environments. For the psychological warfare the Night Lords specialize in, conflict with other humans - or, rarely, with sapient xenos - is deemed necessary.

### Combat Doctrine

The hallmark of Night Lords doctrine is the focus on attacking enemy morale. Inflicting casualties is a valuable tool toward this end, and the legion recognizes that in most cases they will end by destroying the enemy's soldiers, but they consider that the key to a successful operation is destroying the ability of the foe to mount an organized resistance. This does not always take the same form; Tyranids, for example, are immmune to terror tactics, and Necrons and traitor astartes are highly resistant. Against Tyranids they seek to cause mayhem and distract the foe while elite squads can target the crucial synapse creatures; against Necrons they rely on pure stealth and asymmetric warfare as long as possible; against traitor astartes they adopt the Hydra's methods and try to sow division among the ranks, playing on the paranoia and status-jockeying nearly endemic to the warbands of Chaos. But their first resort is always to attack morale directly, wearing down the enemy through constant fear and exhausting them with constant high alert.

### Organization

As with other legions of the Shadow Brotherhood, the Night Lords operate, in the modern day, in very small groups. Usually they are deployed into a war as two to seven five-man squads, applied at a crucial point in the theater. Rarely, they will be deployed across many battlefields of the same high-value theater, gathering three or more full orders and fielding one or two thousand marines; the most recent time this was necessary was the defense of Lissen IV, an Agri-World, against a large-scale Eldar assault by two Craftworlds and the rest of their Webway Coil.

When not at war, Night Lord orders are itinerant; their dedicated order serfs are only those who are needed for maintenance of their fleet, with the rest being provided by the many Shadow Cloisters across the Imperium; shared facilities for rest, repair, and resupply, used by whichever Shadow Brotherhood orders are nearby. These are also used to share information and compare achievements with cousins of other orders, both by speaking with those who are present in the same cloister and by leaving messages which will be carried to those elsewhere.

Because their orders are so small, they have little room for separated veteran or trainee elements. Initiates are usually first deployed alongside command and control, far from the lines, and then integrated into the operating squads. This has little room for slow skill gain, which may account for the necessity of experience in fighting intelligent foes the 8th legion requires of its recruits. Veterans oversee training, but it is common for them to be traded to and from specialist orders of the Shadow Brotherhood, who take on unusually difficult missions (and usually are a mixture of Hydra, Night Lord, and Raven Guard descent, to maximize the diversity of mastered skills). As the orders are secretive, it is unclear if veterans who leave one of these specialist orders return to their order of origin, or if they merely transfer to whichever 'ordinary' order is convenient at their time of departure. This has occasionally led to accusations of legion-building, but since the total number of Shadow Brothers is less than a tenth the number of the First and Last, those accusations have not had much impact.

Their small orders and deployment as tiny squads make dedicated specialists usually infeasible in the field. Each order, however small, maintains at least one dedicated Apothecary, Chaplain, and Techmarine, but in the field they rely on 'field specialists' who are trained in the basics. Their apothecaries teach every marine is trained in how to properly remove and preserve progenoids, and in other anatomy usable to administer first aid or to bloodily dissect a target in order to create a maximum of horror in those who see it. The techmarines teach them all the basics of electronic warfare and breaching security systems, focusing on subverting enemy communications both to gain information and to attack morale. Chaplains teach officers to administer rites appropriate to detached operations, but largely focus on speaking with brothers when they are returned from their missions.

### Beliefs

All astartes have a quasi-religious reverence for gene-seed, since it represents both the past and the future of their order. The Night Lords are unusually emphatic about this, however; every brother is expected to memorize the line of brothers whose geneseed fathered his, with their greatest deeds. Which era of Night Lord history the first ancestor-brother lived in is also given superstitious import. Brothers of Founder's Era lines are held to be well-suited for leadership roles and the Chaplaincy. The Haunter's Era lines are held to produce great assault marines (and destroyer squads; while they were still in use, destroyer marines were drawn almost entirely from Haunter's Era lines). Brother's Era lines are believed to be the most flexible in their approach and best at operating according to Raven Guard or Hydra methods; Traitor's Era lines are considered the best at contingency planning and improvisation. Sons' Era marines are rare; older gene-lines fission into multiple branches, but truly _new_ lines require either advanced genetics knowledge (rarely possessed by anyone in the Imperium after the death of the Emperor and most primarchs) or biological material from the primarch. Most "Sons' Era" lines are in truth lines where the history was lost; they are quietly pitied by their brothers, and as such frequently enter the specialist ranks.

Shared with the others of the Shadow Brotherhood is the culture of "Shadow Games". Conveyed between orders via dead drops and messages left at the Shadow Cloisters are an endless series of competitions, proving their skill to their cousin orders and sharing bragging rights among the only group who their deeds are not hidden from. Detracting from a mission in order to secure a more impressive achievement in the Games is not unknown, though overtly doing so is punished; incidents of such pseudo-sabotage remain mercifully rare.

The Night Lords maintain a collective identity as the vile left hand of the emperor, doing his dirty work far from the gaze of the populace they protect. This dictates their private warcry ("His knives in the dark!") and reflects the fatalism and pervasive shame inherent in their psychology; they are a gene-line whose natural aptitudes have no place in civilized society, and none believe this more than they do themselves. They are the Emperor's killers, as much as are the Officio Assassinorum.

### Geneseed

Physically, the Night Lords descendants have very pale skin and eyes which go fully black by the time they reach their second decade as astartes, and universally black hair. They are also known to develop sharper teeth and fingernails in some instances, but this remains fairly rare. Contrary to their superstitions, no peculiarities specific to particular eras of their history have been noted. Other than the implied minor problems with the melanchromic organ and potentially the occulobe, no organs are known to fail in their designated tasks. The mucranoid has atrophied at several points in their history, but it is sufficiently useful to their warfare that their Apothecaries made a focused effort to repair it.

Psychologically, they have a tendency toward sadism and fatalism, and the highest incidence of clinincal depression among any gene-line of astartes. (That rate remains below the rates for baseline humans.) Psykers have a strong tendency toward precognition, which almost invariably comes in uncontrolled, painful fits, similar to those of Konrad Curze.

### Battlecry

Varies based on circumstance, calculated to unnerve their opponents. Consistently delivered over vox or hidden speakers to create an illusion of omnipresence.

When fighting fearless foes, they broadcast only over private vox, and cry "His knives in the dark!"


	9. Index Astartes: Legio VIIII, Blood Angels

### Origins

Before the discovery of their primarch, the Ninth were known as the Revenant Legion and as the Eaters of the Dead. They were used for the most brutal campaigns, punishing those who resisted the Emperor's rule and thrown into impossible meat grinders, only to emerge months or years later with strength nearly equal to what they had possessed when they entered it. It was said that they did not change Legion Masters once from founding to finding, but this is a lie; in truth, the newly-chosen Legion Master would devour the entirety of his predecessor's body, gaining his knowledge and memories by virtue of their overactive but highly effective omophagea, and taking his name along with his title.

Their primarch, Sanguinius, landed on the second moon of Baal, and from early in his life he was known both for his fierceness in battle and his mercy and kindness in avoiding battle. He grew rapidly in the care of unmutated humans on Baal Secundus, but as he united the remaining 'pure' humans, he urged restraint in attacking the mutant tribes. Each time he faced tribes which had not attacked his forces, he first offered parley; on a few occasions this led to a cowardly ambush, but he persisted. His offer was simple: peace and medical care, asking only that they scout for the less durable purebred humans (who called themselves The Blood) when the alliance fought hostile tribes. Some took the offer; one of those tribes betrayed The Blood and Sanguinius. His retribution on those was swift, total, and personal; with a sword he had taken from the ruins of the moon and personally reforged, he cut them to pieces to the last man, sparing only the children too young to hold a weapon.

He had the gift of prescience throughout his childhood, and though it did not always tell him what he wished to know, it never led him astray. It was sometimes extremely precise; it told him when the Emperor would arrive in Baal orbit, and he planned his celebration of victory in the unification of Baal Secundus so that the Emperor would arrive and be present in the crowd. Son picked out Father, called him forward, and swore fealty.

This was the last time in his life that his prescience was reliable. Two problems plagued him for the following decades: his prescience gave many conflicting visions, and his sons had all his rage without the humility and kindness which tempered them. The latter he fixed by teaching them art and meditation, and their battle-barges and other capital ships were the most breathtakingly artistic vessels in the Imperium - though the Emperor's Children and some elements of the Mechanicum disagreed. The former he never truly coped with.

Though they were never considered as masterful as their cousin legion the Dark Angels, they were held in high esteem, and the moral righteousness of Sanguinius had spread throughout the legion by the time it marked a century since his discovery. When Guilliman seceded, Sanguinius was one of the strongest backers for Horus's attempt at diplomacy, and he and his legion held firm to this idea even after the assassination of Horus at Prandium. They were not a loudly-heard voice, though, as they had planned a campaign in the galactic north-east, trying to secure the region before Ultramar could do the same; they carried this out, and so were missed in the ambush at Isstvan and spared the casualties. However, when Lorgar and Guilliman created the Ruinstorm, they found themselves cut off, unable to return to the Imperium proper. They probed every possible path and found them cut off, until they found a stroke of luck: Eldar raiders with damaged cloaking fields, disappearing through a specific area of space roughly five meters square. Seeing little other option, the techmarines and, soon enough, librarius of the legion puzzled out how to activate the hidden gate, and all infantry, dreadnoughts, and ground vehicles of the Blood Angels filed through into the Eldar Webway, their serfs and skeleton crews for their voidships remaining behind and setting charges to close off the ability of the raiders to return to the planet and plague its human population.

This began the most pivotal event of the legion's history, beyond even the finding of Sanguinius: the Black Fire campaign. They were lost in the tangled web of the Webway almost immediately, and suffered small but continuous attrition as they plodded through it. As they finished their first month of marching, an oddly-dressed Eldar appeared in their path, carrying a pure-white flag held high, aping the ancient Terran custom of parley. He proposed to Sanguinius that he would lead the astartes on a path that would see them to Terra before the traitors arrived, for a price: a battle with an ancient enemy of the Eldar called a C'Tan, specifically one called Nyadra'zatha The Burning One. Realizing they stood little chance of arriving in time without the Harlequin's help, they agreed. The battle was fierce, and though the Burning One was a single entity, its structure was fractal and thousands of man-sized bodies fought the legion while the largest dueled Sanguinius himself. As the duel entered its third hour, a psychic assault from the Librarians and the Harlequin Solitaire leading them enraged the C'Tan, and the flames in the vast corridor they fought in vanished, only to reappear moments later as torturous black flame, showing Sanguinius held in a death grip and with all the light of his white-blonde hair and shining blue eyes replaced with deepest black. In what would later be recognized as the first occurence of the Black Rage, the legion charged like madmen at the great central pillar of Nyadra'zatha's body. They did not harm it significantly, but it released its grip on the Great Angel, and he capitalized immediately, fighting without the psychic flame that had previously lit his blade but with five-fold the speed and strength, beating it back. They did not destroy it, but pushed it into a trap, and it was sucked through a webway gate into empty space far from the galaxy.

It was in the aftermath that they discovered that the hair and eyes of the whole legion present (and those not present, as well, though of course they did learn that until later) had turned black as thoroughly as had their primarch's, and they had an empathic bond with their brother-marines nearby. They were also rendered painful to be around for those with strong psychic gifts, though despite this the Solitaire kept his end of the bargain and delivered them to a Cthonian webway gate, there to join the Sons of Horus in defense of the Throneworld. 

### Homeworld

The Ninth in the era of Sanguinius had two homeworlds: Baal itself and one of its two large moons, Baal Primus. Baal Secundus was used for some training purposes, but primarily left for the mutant populations of Primus and Secundus, to live in peace as Sanguinius had promised them during his conquest of Primus. The technobarbarians of Baal Primus made up their primary source of recruits, and their fortifications and infrastructure were based on Baal below.

All three were wiped out by the Space Wolves in their campaign of terror and slaughter. Primus was crashed into the planet below and Secundus turned into a slaughterhouse, before having its orbit destabilized by the collision of the other two.

Since the end of the Heresy War, the Blood Angels have divided into many orders, larger than most due to their combat organizational needs. Most are fleet-based but focus on a specific sector or handful of sectors, and have established relationships with the populations of several planets in their patrol range, mainly Civilized Worlds, to recruit from them.

### Combat Doctrine

The Blood Angels excel in close combat, as they have since their inception. Since the death of Sanguinius, they have particularly focused on jump-pack warfare for their assault squads; where normal organization has two specialist squad types, assault and devastators, Blood Angels descendants have three: devastator squads, angel squads (jump-pack assault), and blackfire squads (land-based assault). The three specialties have equal numbers, which matches their preferred deployment strategies.

Besides this peculiarity, there are two differences of structure, both results of the Black Rage. The first is that Blood Angels squads are very large; the smallest starting size considered safe to enter battle in is 8 astartes in close order or 12 in the usual, looser skirmish formation; rather than the 10-man squads splitting in half, the Blood Angels have nominal squad strength at 24, splitting to two subsquads of 12. These large squads, though they stave off the Black Rage, are totally unsuitable for any covert operations or most zone mortalis operations.

Therefore, the second structural oddity: the Blood Angels rely heavily on their novices, not only for reconassaince but also for urban warfare and breaching operations. Neophytes do not initially show the black eyes and hair of the bloodline, instead tending toward the pale hair and blue eyes of Sanguinius in his youth. The darkening, and the connection to the psychic "blood web", comes when they first feel the pain of loss in combat enough to make them lose control, which takes a greater trauma than it does for their brothers who have previously lost themselves to the Black Rage. Most neophytes feel the Rage some time in their time as Scouts, but not all; those 10% who prove themselves worthy of the Black Carapace without feeling it are known as the Pure Host, and supply both sergeants for the Scout teams and the urban warfare teams and breaching experts for zone mortalis operations. This leads to an interesting sequence-break for the Blood Angels: around one in ten neophytes transition directly from carapace-less Scout armor directly to Terminator armor, before ever wearing the tactical armor of a standard line marine. Accordingly, they equip most veterans in standard tactical armor with the the "Crux Terminatus", which they call the "Crux Sanguis", and do not see Terminators as a particular mark of respect earned.

Neophytes who feel the Black Rage before earning the Black Carapace proceed to the blackfire squads, after those to the angel squads, and finally, after demonstrating the discipline to resist the urge to charge into close combat when tactically inexpedient, to the devastator squads.

### Organization

In accordance with their preference for close combat and unusual support needs when in combat, the organization of Blood Angels orders is also divergent. Their companies and battalions are enlarged to the same degree as their squads, with each company but the scout company comprised of 8 squads of 24. A standard battalion has a veteran company, consisting of four veteran angel squads, two veteran blackfire squads (frequently in terminator armor), and two veteran devastator squads, four battle companies each with five tactical squads and one each of angel, blackfire, and devastator squads, and one reserve company for each of the four principal squad types, plus scouts and headquarters specialists.

The duties of Apothecary and Chaplain are less separate among the Blood Angels than most lineages; their namesake gives them a holy reverence for the inherited blood of Sanguinius, and so apothecaries, called Sanguinary Priests, lead many rites alongside the chaplains. Sanguinary Priests are chosen, where possible, from the ranks of those who remained in the Pure Host for many years, with a rare few even taking up the Narthecium without yet feeling the Rage. The chaplains, by contrast, are always chosen from those who have felt the Black Rage but resisted it under extreme circumstances. This demonstrates both a strong will and an understanding of the Rage, both ideal for Chaplains, who advise and guide their brothers, pull those fallen into the Rage back to coherency, and shepherd those who have lost themselves in the Black Rage and can no longer be controlled.

Those lost souls are called the Black Company, and are nearly beasts. They fight with the strength of ten ordinary marines and ignore injuries that would kill a normal man instantly and cripple a normal astartes. They attack whatever is near, mostly able to distinguish Blood Angels from enemies, but difficult even for the steward-chaplains to direct their rage. Allies, or even Blood Angels Scouts and Pure Host, are no safer than foes. Generally their reckless disregard for injury kills them in their first or second engagement in the Black Company (which despite its name rarely numbers more than ten per battalion); those who do not are mercy-killed by the presiding chaplain.

### Beliefs

The Blood Angels are more tied to their primarch than any other in the modern legion; they experience flashes of his life when the Black Rage pulls at them, and have a tangible reminder of their personal bond to their progenitor in the darkening of their features. The Sanguinary Priests also recycle the blood of Sanguinius through their veins generation after generation and use it in initiation ceremonies, so more than any others they have a sense of being directly born from their primarch. To a great extent, they revere the "blood web" which binds them together and helps them fight off the Black Rage as the spirit of Sanguinius himself, so their orders' cult ranks it second only to the primarch as he was in life, ahead even of the Emperor.

In a seeming contradiction, though, they revere those brothers who have not experienced the blood web. In their eyes, those who have remained free of the Black Rage for longer, while they are not tied to the blood web, are also free of the emotional blunting and austerity the Rage brings, and so are closer to Sanguinius as he wanted to be, rather than as he was at the end of his life. They are entrusted with the moral center of the lineage, and with choosing and inducting new recruits, as well as with the terminator armor and detached duties they are uniquely suited to carry out.

Since the death of Sanguinius, the legion's legends say that his spirit is not gone, but merely dissipated into the blood web. Some mystery cults within the Blood Angel successors believe that if every one of Sanguinius's sons fight together on one battlefield and none are in the grip of the Black Rage, their father will appear and lead them. Since the gathering of a legion in one mass is forbidden to all but the Dark Angels, this has never been tested and in all probability never shall be.

### Geneseed

There are two primary flaws to the Blood Angels geneseed. The older one is an overactive omophagea which makes them thirst for blood when stressed or afraid, though its memory-incorporating aspects also operate with increased efficiency. The younger is the Black Rage, the collective psychic trauma from the soul-ripping the legion and primarch received at the hands of a C'Tan in the years of the Heresy War. This makes them lose self-control and tactical awareness when their brother-marines begin to die, with only the psychic connection they term the blood web helping to keep them anchored.

Before the Heresy War, they were known for producing precognitive psykers and had a large Librarius. After the encounter with the C'Tan, the legion ceased to generate new psykers with any regularity, though occasional short-range precognitives surface, about 1 in every 50,000 marines of the gene line. Psychologically, they are austere and restrained, cultivating intense meditative focus and a spare, elegant aesthetic. All who have experienced the Black Rage experience permanent emotional blunting, which has made the blood-thirst that plagued them in their early years a much-reduced concern in later millennia.

### Battlecry

"Blood from the Ashes! On the Angel's wings!"


	10. Index Astartes: Legio X, Reforged

### Origins

More than any other traitor legion, the Tenth was doomed from the outset, seeded with Nurgle's corruption in their hearts at the time of the scattering of primarchs. The means of his corruption in their primarch's heart is the most obvious, but in retrospect their fear of weakness and disgust at frailty, communal support, and sentiment, also seem indicative of Nurgle's touch.

The primarch later named Ferrus Manus fell to earth on the planet Medusa, his capsule penetrating several layers of a cave system in the great mountain Karaashi. Several technorganic beasts from Medusa's civilized past during the Dark Age of Technology were imprisoned there, and the crash broke through the cages and freed some. The infant primarch fought hand to hand with a clockwolf and databear, subduing them and moving the capsule he had fallen in to fill the gap in the cage walls, containing them safely. But he discovered a greater beast, a silvery serpent, had already escaped into the lands below. Off an intuition that others like him would live there, ones weaker than him, he resolved to subdue and contain the serpent before he sought out his kin.

Legends of Medusa speak of these times; of a giant striding between their homes and a great silver dragon, wrestling it and pushing it away into the wilderness. From the number of distinct stories, with substantially different details, this must have repeated a dozen times or more. The primarch was not stronger than the wyrm, but he was more tireless and more intelligent; at length, he allowed it a path of least resistance which led back into the mountain it had been imprisoned in. Entering, he found that the earthquake caused by his fall had weakened the cage beyond fixing, even unearthing a slow but steady lava flow. He could not imprison it; he would have to kill it.

He entered the cave and once again wrestled with the silver wyrm, now pushing it closer and closer to the lava. Finally, with its jaws locked onto him, he plunged a large segment of its body into the lava, holding it under. The silvery metal it was scaled with shimmered and rippled, but did not melt, until finally its spine burst open and its grip slackened. Rather than fleshy organs or rational mechanisms, its innards were a gray-green crystal, which seemed to be rotting before his eyes, filling his nostrils with a putrid mixture of rotting ozone and acrid feces. When he pulled his hands free of the heat and pried the jaws off his body, he found that the hands were now coated in the same hard, shining metal as the scales, though flexible as ever. He decided that he should therefore be named Ferrus Manus, "the iron hand".

The legion he would later lead, known as the Stormwalkers or the Iron Tenth, drew its recruits from the sons of Albia, a powerful and unusually technologically sophisticated nation of Terra which, among other things, built the Ironsides which inspired the Emperor's later creation of the Dreadnought chassis. They had fought the Imperial forces to a standstill for months during the Unification Wars, and ultimately joined His service by diplomacy, the Emperor acknowledging their great skill, valor, and principles, and so they provided the recruits for several of the astartes legions. The Stormwalkers were generalists, but displayed particular skill for mobile artillery operations, pushing forward an infantry line under cover of slowly-advancing heavy firepower. Worryingly, they were noted even then as being careful with the lives of their Imperial Army allies, but showing little regard for civilian casualties. On a few occasions, leadership of other legions, the Dragon Warriors most commonly, challenged them about this, but they were unapologetic. In their words, "those who will not take up arms in their own defense are not worthy of our protection".

This was tempered somewhat when the Crusade found Medusa and Ferrus Manus. In his address to his sons, he told them "We are the weapons of the Emperor, forged to make humanity strong. In the crucible of war, despite obstinacy and ignorance leading to parts of humanity opposing us, we will reforge the galaxy into a purer, stronger form, removing the impurities of superstition, xenos, and disunity. We shall give the weak the space to become strong, and the strong the impetus to become stronger. We shall reforge, and be reforged. Go forth, my sons, and be not just iron but steel. Be my Reforged!"

This confidence in humanity and the Emperor, imparted to Manus on his rediscovery, was not to last. Ferrus had formed three close friendships: with Fulgrim, he bonded over smithcraft and their fierce competitive spirit, solidified by their trade of the weapons they had made in competition with each other. With Vulkan, he discussed improvements to technology and forging and debated the proper attitude toward humanity. And Horus, he respected as a great leader, someone who could take any men or armies and push them to perform better than they had ever done before. He enthusiastically supported Horus for Warmaster over other candidates like El'Jonson and Guilliman, both of whom he considered haughty and overbearing.

So when Horus was assassinated, he lost faith in the Crusade. He saw the great man, strong as any, fall, and as he reflected, he contemplated the mighty empires the Legiones Astartes had brought low, and the weak ones which had knelt without a fight. He shared his doubts with his senior Iron Fathers, and the bleak view of the Imperium as rewarding weakness and punishing strength was whispered up and down the ranks.

Guided by sorcerous divinations, Lorgar and Vulkan observed this, and saw opportunity. Under the guise of training with the expert Techmarines of the Reforged, a dozen Techmarines of the Word Bearers, including one from the Gal Vorbak daemonhosts, traveled to seek audience with him. A few days into their training, the senior Word Bearer present approached the primarch, requesting the honor of a visit to their guest quarters, where they could discuss privately some means Lorgar and his legion had found to foster greater strength among the astartes. This was not precisely a lie; daemonhosts, after all, are stronger than mortals. In those guest quarters, they had summoned a daemon of Nurgle, Gielpux the Glitchbloom, who was waiting to make good on the hooks he had set in the primarch's mind years before.

When Manus opened the door, he recoiled from the sudden assault of smell. It reeked of rotting ozone and acrid feces, and he was briefly stunned, his mind twisting to evade the olfactory nightmare but also trying to place it. As he stepped through, Gielpux rose and addressed him, "Greetings, mighty smith. My grandfather asks how you have liked the inherited strength of the silver wyrm I loosed on Medusa for him, and offers to share that gift and more with you and all your sons." In his despair and doubt, he was seduced. He gathered a few Iron Fathers he knew would follow him into blasphemy, and the Word Bearers Techmarines, and descended into his workshop.

The Centurion mobile armor suits saw good service in the first century of the Great Crusade. After the discovery of the primarch known as The Fettered, and the Emperor's improvement of the Albian Ironside into the Dreadnought armor, marine-scale dreadnoughts took on most of the battlefield roles formerly the domain of the Centurion suits. This left many Centurions sitting idle in legion armories, and it was a frequent project of the great artisans of the legions to attempt to improve them into something more useful. None had succeeded, not even Vulkan, Perturabo, or Manus himself. On this damned night, that changed. In an inspired fury, adding blood and sinew from themselves and unfortunate legion serfs, a dozen Centurion suits were modified into the Ahaddi suits, lighter and smaller but just as protective and with substantially improved automatic repair of themselves and their occupants. By trialing these with progressively more of the legion Techmarines and having them construct more, they spread the "Wyrm's Rot", a biotechnological plague devised by the Glitchbloom, through the ranks, quickly corrupting all the legion present with Manus.

On the killing fields of Isstvan, the bloated Ahaddi suits and technorganic fusions augmetics that the fallen techmarines devised were put to good use, devastating the loyalist forces and particularly the rival artisans of the Iron Sages. When the deed was done and secrecy no longer needed, most of the legion set about adapting their ships and vehicles to carry the "holy Wyrmrot" and to meld themselves with the machines, bloating with crystalline pustules and bruised steel. Their primarch returned to his home planet, devouring the still-pungent corpse of the Silver Wyrm and incorporating its daemonic flesh and soul into himself, ascending to Daemonhood in the process. 

### Homeworld

As with most of the other Traitor Legions, the Reforged have two primary homeworlds, one in realspace and one in a Warp Rift. Their ancestral home of Medusa is still their main source for recruitment. It remains a dust-shrouded world, the skies dark and blocked by ash and storms. Despite the dim light, under the custodianship of the Reforged it teems with life, with fungal blooms and ore-eating plagues reshaping it regularly. The black skies are now greener, and the old and weak who would, in ancient days, have been exiled and exposed to the elements are now sent into Nurgle's pits, to die or be strengthened by the gifts of the Grandfather. The hardy mountain clans now value toughness more highly and strength not as much, but their culture would be recognizable to their ancestors.

Manus himself resides on a Daemon World inside the Eye of Terror called Ironrot. The twisted trees are made of clockwork, wood, and bone intermixed, the stones have muscle and skin in layers, and the animals have crystalline eyes and metallic cabling twists underneath their many open wounds. Inside its largest mountain, the Daemon Primarch labors in the Plagueforge, twisting tanks and beasts into nightmarish amalgams and devising new strains of scrapcode and plague to corrupt machines and those operating them as the Wyrmrot corrupted his legion.

Also important to the legion is the Daemon World of Glitchhome. In recognition of his important role in the corruption of the Reforged, Gielpux was elevated, becoming one of Nurgle's chosen champions and the second-ranking Proctor of Pestilence (behind only Nurgle's Tallyman Epidemius), with the new, more sacred name Gielpux Gleitch, Provand of Scrapox and Bitwarp. He presides over the world of Glitchhome, which is a tangled mess of biotechnological miasmas and forests, changing at speeds rarely seen outside Tzeentch's domains. Even other daemons fear to tread on Glitchhome, so Givelpuck imports Furies and those daemons Nurgle desires to punish, but the Reforged are welcome and often visit to consult and take the daemon engines Gielpux extracts from his endless experimentation to use in battle against the enemies of Nurgle.

### Combat Doctrine

The Wyrmrot which afflicted the whole legion after their fall has made them tough but slow-moving, and when mobility is needed they rely on transports. These transports are also rotting, so they move slower than those of other traitors or loyalists, but they remain far faster than foot. As before their fall, their preferred method of war is a slow but inexorable advance covered by heavy artillery. The artillery now tends toward diseased projectiles and missiles which broadcast wyrmrot-carrying scrapcode as they destroy, but the nature of its use is unchanged.

The Reforged have the lowest use of daemon engines from the Forge of Souls of any traitor legion, but only because they prefer to make their own; they embed slaves into vehicles to provide controlling intelligence and motive force, and repurpose broken vehicles captured in battle into Dreadnought-like walkers, with live or dead pilots quickly merging with the machine to form honored Rotbrutes. Unlike the more common Helbrutes of other legions, Rotbrutes retain their intelligence and (questionable) sanity, and often the van of a Reforged warband is a half-dozen Rotbrutes.

### Organization

In the wake of the Heresy War, the Reforged, like most traitor legions, fragmented. Their warbands, which they usually call "Clans", are many, nominally 49 grouped into 7 larger battalions. The battalions are nominal only; internecine warfare between clans in the same battalion is common and the commander of a battalion hold no power except that which he commands as the master of his clan. Even when Ferrus Manus emerges from his forge to command the whole legion, the titular battalion commanders have little sway; if another clan in the battalion is stronger, that clan's chief will take over the title. Size and composition of clans also varies wildly according to the charisma, power, and specialties of the clan chief.

A typical small clan will have a hundred marines, three to eight tanks, at least five Rotbrutes - one or two of which will be Rot Priests - thirty Ahaddi suits, and a half-dozen assorted Daemon Engines, Mutilators, and Obliterators. Around five of the marines will be Forgefathers. Larger clans have as many as ten times this, and will have a few battle-ready flying transports; the very largest clans are about 7000 marines strong.

### Beliefs

Since their inception, the Tenth Legion have always valued strength and endurance. How this expressed itself varied through their history, but in its Nurglite form it consists of contempt for the weak and corruption of the strong. Through the guidance and help of Grandfather Nurgle, they infect everyone, with the strong enduring and becoming stronger and the weak dying and becoming tools.

Their religious life is a dualist view; on the one hand, Nurgle, giver of strength and culler of the weak, and on the other, Ferrus Manus, giver of knowledge and purifier of the strong. The Forgefathers, combined Apothecary-Techpriests who manipulate flesh and steel to repair and improve their legion, represent Manus, and recite litanies of strength and hatred to inspire their brothers as they fight. The Rot Priests, great dreadnoughts who are beyond death and strengthened by the mighty bio-armor of Nurgle, represent the Grandfather, launching poxy artillery across the battlefield to cull the weak.

### Geneseed

The Emperor-made organs of the Reforged are heavily degraded, but they do not consider them so; they have been altered and mechanized by the Wyrmrot and other plagues of Nurgle, and make them no weaker than they were before their fall. The marines stature and girth varies, but all have strange protruding sores and pustules which show their unnatural nature by the artificial and inorganic nature of their contents. Nearly all have had the Wyrmrot eat through their bodies and armors so far that they are no longer separable; the technorganic corruption has changed bone to ceramite and ceramite to bone. Despite their indifference to the changes, this would, ordinarily, give them great difficulty inducting new marines. However, the unholy blending of flesh and armor grows, and so embedding pieces of the armor and some of the standard implants into a recruit will cause them to gradually develop the equivalents of all the standard organs. They still cannot create new members with any speed, but they also are the most durable and lowest-attrition of the traitor legions, so they do not have serious problems with keeping up their strength.

### Battlecry

"Purge the unworthy!"


	11. Legio XI, Name Unknown

All records of the Eleventh and their primarch were purged some time during the Custodianship. What records persist suggest that the primarch was found late in the Crusade, somewhere near the Ghoul Stars. Neither the primarch nor the legion was active by the end of M30; speculative interpretation points to a date for the primarch's rediscovery in the late 800s.M30, and to the extermination of the legion and primarch by the Space Wolves shortly thereafter by the command of the Emperor.

What sins this was punishment for is unknown. Speculation tentatively points to egregious tech-heresy of some variety due to the patchy records of the censor's order emphasizing that it had to be imposed by force on the Forge Worlds, and some reports that the Magnificat keeps some sparse records of the legion in their most restricted archives. Still, in His beneficence the Emperor has clearly decreed that it is unwise for mortal scholars to speculate on the matter.


	12. Index Astartes: Legio XII, Chained Hounds

### Origins

Unusual among the founding legions, the Twelth was not drawn from any particular region or cultures of Terra, but from the most competitive and aggressive potential recruits who were considered for any of the other legions. They displayed more ruthlessness than any legion but the Eighth, and more savagery than any but the Sixth. They were the Emperor's wrecking ball, rarely used but devastating when loosed. For this, he gave them the cognomen "War Hounds". After their first few engagements, they did not take the field for several years, their fast being broken with the brutal Second Pacification of Luna, retaliation for the poisoning of the Third Legion's geneseed. This established the War Hounds as being a vicious tool of reprisal against anyone who pretended fealty to the Emperor and then betrayed Him. Their second deployment was the Cerberus Suppression, sent in to subdue the rebelling prison colony of Cerberus after the Imperial Army who responded first was routed with tales of giant supermen leading the rioting prisoners. The fighting was legion-wide, and they found the tales were true: left-over Thunder Warriors were alive on Cerberus Station, and they were greater in strength and skill than the astartes sent to subdue them. After five long hours of cramped-quarters melee, the Legion Master reported the asteroid cluster was secure. When asked how many enemy combatants needed to be processed, Legion Master Ibram Ghreer replied "We were ordered to deliver the Emperor's wrath to Cerberus. No return shipment was requested." From a prison population before the rebellion of 500,000, the Imperial Army cleanup battalions found only 703 remaining alive.

After this legion-wide blooding, the War Hounds ceased to be as single-purposes as they had been. They were split in many small companies, acting as speartip assault groups for many other legions. Other legions considered them fine company and excellent allies, and from the cerebral gaming tables of the Iron Sages to the boisterous Mjød halls of the Space Wolves, the War Hounds proved themselves capable of fitting in with every legion they served with. The core of the legion not seconded to others was the 13th Expeditionary Fleet, and its specialty remained crushing rebellions and bloody vengeance on recalcitrant foes. From their primary muster world of Bodt, a volcanic training ground for their recruits and early conquest, the fiercest elements of the Great Crusade attached themselves to the War Hounds core. The Legio Audax and their Titan-hunting Ursus Claws, the Numen Gun Clans and their Ork-like reckless enthusiasm for massive firepower, modern-armed tribal warriors from a dozen Feral Worlds, and many more, all joined the Bloody Thirteenth. The War Hounds acceded to this with good grace; they did not revel in pointless slaughter, but in a common phrasing, they felt "a good soldier must necessarily have a large part of his mind which enjoys murder". They felt they made less attempt to hide this sadistic rage than their cousins, but thought this was simple self-honesty. Accordingly, they did not separate out Destroyer marines from the rank and file; any marine present in a theater where prohibited weapons had been authorized was permitted to wield them.

The Crusade eventually found their primarch, but this was not a reunion. The rebel gladiator known as Angron, Lord of the Red Sands, wished to die alongside his brothers in battle rather than serve the Emperor. The Emperor tried to insist, but through means never truly understood, He was thwarted. Dawn came and Angron led his slave army against the high-riders of the slaver cities. The hardened ex-gladiators and their superb tactical leadership allowed them to take down four militiamen for every death they sustained, but they were outnumbered six-to-one. It was a peerless feat of arms, the greatest in the history of Nuceria, but it was not enough for a victory, only a pyrrhic draw. The Emperor and some of his Custodes roamed the battlefield, trying to find with exhaustive search what He could not divine by psychic might, but throughout the battle, Angron eluded them. As dusk fell, one of the Custodes scouts finally found his trail. The battle had nearly ended; the city armies were scattered and leaderless, but it was difficult to find a single living rebel anywhere on the battlefield. The Emperor had hope, for if any of the ex-slaves lived, it would surely be his son.

But Angron had gotten his wish. In a cave, he had died with three slaves behind him and the corpses of dozens of city soldiers before him, fighting to the end to protect his brothers and sisters. The Emperor's soldiers took his body and departed immediately, leaving iterators and Imperial Army to secure the compliance of Nuceria. A team of medics and a remembrancer, Eurykidas DeMartos traveled the field, looking for survivors; they found nine men and three women of the slaves, and DeMartos arranged passage for the twelve to Bodt once they were recovered. The War Hounds called them The Twelve Parasods ("bearers of tradition"), and revered them as their link with the man their gene-father had been.

While he was no longer alive, he still existed. The Emperor had constructed the first dreadnought, modeling it after the Albian Ironsides, and while much of Angron's brain was unsalvageable due to deterioration and the excision of the Butcher's Nails, he was not an entirely lost cause. His Father greeted him as Angron, but he refused that name, and any other. He suggested he be referred to as the Fettered, tied as he was to the world of the living. His nearly-living body was sufficient to revitalize the geneseed stores of the War Hounds, but he did not rejoin them; he was kept by the Emperor's side as a powerful weapon.

The Hounds knew little of the Fettered. They learned some of Angron's story from the Parasods, and heard from speaking with cousin marines who had fought alongside the Emperor that their gene-father was a half-living tool of the Emperor. From the story of Angron's fight to free his enslaved comrades and the rumors of his current state, they inferred he was unhappy with his lot. In his honor, they renamed their legion the Chained Hounds, and their heraldry added a three-link chain painted on top of the red hound rampant they had claimed when the Emperor gave them their cognomen. They mourned their father's absence and tried to emulate his virtues, destroying tyranny where they found it and forging deep personal and emotional bonds with the Imperial Army divisions and other allies they fought beside. During this time, they became less known for their viciousness; they were still a wrecking ball, but a targeted one, which might utterly obliterate a capital city but would leave other parts of the rebellious planet untouched unless they fired upon the legion.

After the Triumph of Ullanor, when the Emperor left the field to return to Terra, the Chained Hounds were placed under the personal command of Warmaster Horus, alongside his own legion and the other legion without a primarch in the field, the Thousand Sons. Also in Horus's fleet was the Fettered himself, and squads of Hounds eagerly sought him out, delighted to speak with their progenitor. This delight was short-lived; they learned that he was ill-content, and served the Crusade only grudgingly. They were torn; they believed in the cause, and wished the Emperor’s Crusade to succeed, but they were also loyal to their father. Ultimately, they held a secretive congress of marines, every man of the legion having a say. They agreed that to allow him to remain in bondage, even for the most noble of causes, could not be borne, but that they could not stomach wholesale desertion, especially in the face of the newly renegade Ultramarines and rumors of the Death Guard and the Salamanders joining them in organized rebellion. The companies drew lots; one-fifth would abduct the dreadnought-primarch, while the rest continued the Crusade. The chosen companies approached the Navigators attached to their fleets to sound them out for willingness to go along with their rebellion; the camaraderie they had fostered made this comparatively easy.

While Horus’s fleet was docked with the Phalanx for repairs and refitting, and the Warmaster was off the station on a diplomatic mission, the chosen Hounds struck. They overpowered and subdued the guards on the chamber of relics, activated the dreadnought containing their father, and bid him follow them. They "forcibly abducted" the chosen Navigators, seized several uncrewed battle-barges of the Sons of Horus, not yet fully refitted but safe for travel, and set a course for an unknown destination, with their precious cargo in tow. By the time Horus was alerted, they were far beyond the system, and a significant effort would have been needed. The Warmaster made a token effort and put the remainder of the Hounds under Custodes guard, but did not press the issue. It is an article of faith among the Chained Hounds and their successor orders that Horus understood the loyalty they felt toward their father and let them go.

Certainly, it would have been easy to find them had he acted quickly. Their first destination was Nuceria; it had been inducted into the Imperium by diplomacy in the wake of the war against the Eaters of Cities, but the slaver lords and their high-riders still ruled the planet. Finally fighting with their primarch, the Chained Hounds liberated their slaves, leveled their palaces, wiped out the noble classes, and installed aggressively populist democracies in their places. They taught the populace how to rebuild their cities, and only then withdrew, to a nondescript planet called Balthor Sigma. The Fettered thanked them for helping him complete the work he could do accomplish in life, but made it known that he did not truly wish to live. They pleaded to get to know their gene-father before he died, and he acquiesced; he would get to know every son who had rescued him before making his irrevocable decision.

Far away, the Heresy War raged. The remainder of the Chained Hounds gave no further reason to doubt their loyalty, but remained mistrusted. Seeking to prove their fervor, Legion Master Kharn demanded to be in the spearhead of the offensive at Isstvan V. Warmaster of Retaliation Fulgrim granted this requests, and so the casualties in the Drop Site Massacre were heavier on the Chained Hounds than on any other legion; only Macer Verren's 12th Company escaped the surface, though it's said that Kharn and his command squad continued the first for seven days after the remainder of the loyal legions were dead or fled. This quieted the suspicions for the remainder of the Heresy War, and largely ended their part in it.

A century after his abduction, the errant Hounds could stall the Fettered no longer; they had all grown to known him well, and he to know them in return. His wishes were unchanged; he thanked them, and said that while he ached for his brothers still, he could not have asked for worthier sons. They returned to Nuceria and disinterred him, conducting a funeral where he was deposited into a volcano of Nuceria not far from the place where his first death had occurred. By this time the dust from the Heresy War had settled, and the reconquest was reaching them once again. Mindful that they were still renegades in law and deed, if not at heart, they disappeared off the planet, wandering the stars fighting alongside Guardsmen who did not know the difference.

Their brothers who had remained stalwart through the Heresy had, as the other loyal legions save one, been split apart, but they shared the secret among the successors. The Black Beasts, the Red Teeth, the Attack Dogs and the Muzzled; all kept the story going, hidden among their company captains and other leaders. As their lost comrades made contact, they trickled into the ranks; a squad here, a Land Raider there. Their brothers were sworn to secrecy about their unusually-seasoned new comrades, and pains were made to conceal the arrivals from any outside the organization of successors known as The Kennel. To further this concealment, they avoided suspicion by taking on any task from the Lords of Terra, no matter how bloody or inglorious. Like the hounds they took their name from, they would go wherever they were led and attack whatever quarry they were set. The last of the Wild Hounds were integrated into their brother companies around M35. As of M37 the Kennel still accepted whatever dirty jobs they were given, perhaps because they were all numb to the futility and pointless bloodshed that they had acceded to for so long.

### Homeworld

Both Nuceria and Bodt were hit by Space Wolf pogroms. The Nucerian attack came during the tail end of the Wild Hounds reconquest of the planet, and since they outnumbered the Wolves significantly and were unexpected, they led the new armies they had raised in its defense, blooding them and unifying them with a common enemy. On Bodt, no such astartes garrison was present, and it had little native population. All residents, baseline and astartes, were killed and their bones piled in huge cairns, and since this did not sate the bloodlust of the Wolves, every manmade structure on its surface was leveled before they departed.

However, Bodt was never chosen as a recruiting world, merely a muster world. So in effect, the Chained Hounds lost almost nothing in the pogroms, unlike all their loyal allies except the Hydra. However, given the scrutiny they were under and the Nucerian records written during the Reconquest which told how the renegade Hounds had conquered it, they did not use Nuceria as a recruiting world, though periodic pilgrim ships would arrive at Bodt from Nuceria with devoted followers begging the honor of becoming chapter serfs, and these requests were often granted.

Since the division of the legions into orders, Bodt is not a muster world for any particular group of the Kennel. They use it primarily as a meeting ground, where cousin orders renew alliances and settle grudges with honor duels.

### Combat Doctrine

The Hounds have always preferred close combat, relishing the visceral destruction of personal violence. They do not field an unusual number of assault squads, but their main-line tactical squads use melee weapon over bolt pistols, and where available will trade their standard boltguns for the assault variant. The Hounds favor hitting a small number of picked targets with excessive force to open a front in a new campaign, in the manner of the Night Lords, after which they fight more akin to a crusading Fist successor.

Through to M40, due to their willingness to use Destroyer-grade weapons in wide deployment across the legion and their frequent role as the attack dogs of the High Lords of Terra, their devastator heavy support squads still have access to melta, phosphex, and rad missiles.

### Organization

The Kennel is fairly unremarkable in its organization. They have some small peculiarities in structure, which stem from the practice of referring to companies and squads by role or by officer's name, not by number. The reason they give is an egalitarian impulse, not wishing to imply that, for example, 2nd company is senior or superior to 4th. In actuality, this started in order to conceal the addition of the Wild Hounds trickling into the loyal orders.

As a result of the lack of numbering, they have a more explicit command hierarchy than most orders; in a line company, the tactical squads will be grouped by threes under Master Sergeants, and one sergeant each for the devastator and assault squads is designated Master Sergeant and his name invoked when the company captain wants to send both squads to a purpose. Reserve companies usually have twelve squads under four Master Sergeants, and two Lieutenants sit above them. The Kennel also preserves the Crusade-era title of Centurion, which denotes a specialist skilled in commanding a mixed formation for specific purpose. The formations needed for commonly-occurring circumstances have a set group and Centurion commander, so that battle-cant can quickly invoke the formation and send them on a task. Largely to maintain the fiction of their egalitarian reason for refusing numbering, orders of the Kennel rarely have veteran companies. Veterans are grouped into squads and those squads are split among the reserve companies; terminators in the reserve tactical companies and vanguard/sternguard squads in the reserve assault/devastator companies.

### Beliefs

Like the Dark Angels and some other legions, the Chained Hounds have a strong tradition of honor duels. Unlike the Last and First, these are not artful dances, but traditionally are fought with leaden hammers and conclude after the first crack of bone.

### Geneseed

Psychologically, the Hounds have two known flaws. The better-known is their bloodthirsty, violent nature. The less known is their tendency toward extremely strong emotions; greater joys, deeper sorrows, stronger rages. This has been noted as shared with the Eldar xenos, though this is in all likelihood purely coincidence.

Physically, the legion and its descendants have a stronger adrenaline response than most, and the catalepsean node works at reduced effectiveness. It is believed by their apothecaries and various genetor-savants that these are related phenomena, but attempts to replicate it in new orders have had unpleasant side-effects. The neuroglottis and occulobe are also inhibited and often nonfunctional, with resulting limited senses compared to other astartes. Genetors of the Mechanicus speculate that this is a partial cause of their preference for close combat. 

### Battlecry

During the Crusade and Heresy eras, the Hounds called "Death is here!"

From a few centuries into the new era of the Imperium, they have changed to "For the Throne! By the sword!"


	13. Index Astartes: Legio XIII, Ultramarines

### Origins

The 13th Legion's first cognomen was the War-Born. This was based on two things; firstly, their initial recruiting population, which consisted of several tribes of holdouts on Terra who resisted the Emperor's Unification armies to the bitter end, nearly being extinguished in the process. Secondly, their performance in early campaigns and the effect this had on their legion culture. Recruiting from disparate source cultures, they were disunified initially, but in their early campaigns they proved adept at, when finally under fire, integrating different assumptions and styles into a unified, seamless whole. Thus the recruits were born from war and from populations born to war, and the legion itself was created by the Emperor but reborn in war. The War-Born proved highly dedicated, and among the most loyal of legions. Only in retrospect, after the Secession of Ultramar, was the pride which had led their parents to fight to the point of extinction rather than kneel considered suspect.

The legion's first operation was the First Pacification of Luna, in which they comported themselves admirably. Their early campaigns were larger in scope and number than most other legions, due to their unusually high adaptability and low rate of mutation and the resulting larger pool of new marines. They were, however, unremarkable in other respects. The first legion-defining campaign they fought was the Osiris Rebellion. The Osiris Cluster had been thoroughly and easily brought to compliance by the War-Born under Legion Master Gren Vosotho, but suddenly erupted in large-scale rebellion some years later. Vosotho brought the legion back to Osiris in force, but quickly learned in the fighting that they were not fighting a normal rebellion, but countless dead-eyed fanatics who used frequent suicide tactics. When the enormous ships of the xenos who commanded this rebellion, later labeled the Osirian Psybrids, emerged from the system's sun, the War-Born attempted to flee in good order, but found they had been trapped; all the transports managed to retreat to the fleet, but thousands of marines and the Legion Master himself were lost on the surface. Command passed to Marius Gage, who secured the fleet through the return of the transports and managed a retreat from the system with comparatively minimal losses. Hundreds still died from armored Psybrids teleporting aboard the fleet's vessels, but of the tens of thousands dead, nine out of ten died in the surface trap. When Lord Commander Gage returned with another two fleets of reinforcements, they found every planet in the cluster scoured of life, with a few barbarian civil wars but no civilization or sign of the Psybrids remaining. The inability to avenge their failure and fallen was a psychological scar on their legion and particularly on Legion Master Gage.

When Ultramar was discovered and their primarch, Roboute Guilliman, recovered, he set about increasing their numbers further with recruits from across Ultramar, which had entered a Golden Age after the cowardly assassination of his foster parents, Consul Konor and his seneschal Tarasha, and the deadly, suicidal revenge his rival Gallan had exacted on the men Roboute had sent to bring him to justice for it. Roboute had done better than Konor had ever dared hope, and knew it, but still sought solace around distant stars, far from unwelcome reminders of his loss. He reorganized his new legion, but knew that as long as he had not shared in their pain, he would not be totally accepted. Therefore, when a distress call from a Chained Hounds detachment at the Eurydice Terminal came and matched the appearance of the Osirian Psybrids, the entirety of the War-Born's expeditionary fleets immediately set their course toward Eurydice.

His experiences in Magna Macragge Civitas had hardened him, and the primarch had developed a ruthless streak to his pragmatism. Accordingly, he asked for volunteers for a suicide mission when they reached the Terminal, with almost no chance of survival and no chance at all of surviving a victory. To remove the stain of their loss and do as their primarch asked was easy, even given the cost, and he had several hundred volunteers. As they entered the system, they quickly assessed it; rather than only human civilians, Feral Orks made up the bulk of the Psybrid puppet-troops. They sent the bulk of the fleet to relieve the Hounds from the siege they were maintaining against the Ork onslaught, but fifty tactical bombers, stealthed, headed for the great Psybrid motherships. Each had a single volunteer at the helm and cyclonic bombs filling the hold, to be detonated when they reached point-blank range.

These bombs did not kill the Psybrids; they were things of the Warp as much as of the flesh. But it did destroy their ships, and leave them stranded. The Librarians of the legion were able to slowly pick their way through the killing fields and wipe out every Psybrid present, with minimal casualties; by the time the legion declared the Eurydice Terminal secure, their total losses numbered only eighty-three. This drew widespread and immense praise from his brothers and the many admirals of the Imperial Navy; notably, Fulgrim's seven-man conquest of Byzas was from the outset an avowed attempt to surpass Eurydice and demonstrate that his legion was strong beyond their numbers. This success won Guilliman the unflagging loyalty of many veterans, Lord Commander Gage foremost among them. At a celebratory banquet the legion held shortly afterward, Gage approached the primarch and said, to him and their legion, that the 13th Legion had truly become the product of his work, as Ultramar had been before them, and asked permission to rechristen them Ultramarines in Guilliman's honor. With trepidation he did not show outwardly, he assented, and the legion were the War-Born no more.

The fanatic loyalty of the veterans, coupled with the hero-worship Ultramar - and therefore the legion's new recruits - gave to its founder and champion, made the devotion the Ultramarines felt for Guilliman rise beyond any other legion's. Their primarch, always a self-assured and stubborn man, became increasing self-absorbed and prideful, beginning to take his correctness to be an effortless axiom rather than a Sisyphean goal. Since he was still, at that time, exceedingly intelligent and possessed of an insightful, incisive mind, this was not widely noted. He challenged other's orders more often, but his legion's size meant they rarely fought alongside other legions, and so because he still respected the Emperor, and had no other superiors save Malcador, this passed largely unremarked for many years. He occupied himself with penning an exhaustive tactical and strategic compendium for the organization and warfare of the space marines, called the Codex Astartes. Among its principles was a more structured subdivision of the legion into 1000-marine groupings he called chapters, similar to battalions in general layout but organized such that each one could act as a flexible rapid reaction force, with specialties split between the ten companies within it. These chapters proved very useful in practice, and some parts of their organization began to be adopted by other legions, though not the doctrinaire, rigid adherence which the Ultramarines tended to give it.

The first time this disregard for the authority of others surfaced notably was when the Emperor made to discipline the Word Bearers for their insistence on inculcating worship of the Emperor on every planet they brought to Compliance. Ultramar had been an atheist polity even before Konor's time, and so the Ultramarines ranked with the Iron Sages as the most staunchly atheist and anti-spiritual of the legions. The Emperor's chosen punishment was to raze every temple and church the Word Bearers had erected on their most prized planet, Khur, and the entirety of Monarchia, which they had named their "Perfect City". Khur sat near Ultramar in Ultima Segmentum, only a few sectors away from Lorgar's homeworld of Colchis, so He naturally chose the Ultramarines as his instrument. When He issued the order, Guilliman refused to comply, denying that it could be just to destroy the lives of the city's millions merely to shame Lorgar. The Emperor locked gazes with him, and though His psychic might was enormous, Guilliman refused to show the pain staring Him down was causing him. After a full minute, the Emperor relaxed his mental hammer and said, "You refuse? So be it. You are not necessary for this. Your legion, however, is. You are relieved of command until further notice. Malcador shall command the 13th in this cleansing. When it is complete I will consider restoring your authority."

Guilliman was livid, but he was well aware that one minute was nearly as long as he could stand the Emperor's wrath. So he nodded curtly and left for his personal lander. The Ultramarines carried out His orders under Malcador's direction and stayed in the sector until the Word Bearers answered the summons and were forced to kneel at the feet of the Ultramarines, the Emperor, and Malcador. Guilliman refused to be present, and it is believed that he sent Lorgar a communique sharing the orders the Emperor had issued and that he had protested them. After a few weeks - around the same time Lorgar emerged from his seclusion - the command of his legion was restored to him and he continued his string of conquests.

These continued without notable discrepancies or incidents until the Triumph of Ullanor. In its wake, the Emperor announced his retreat from the Crusade, and the appointment of Horus as His Warmaster, to oversee the Crusade. When he heard the news, something in Guilliman cracked. _He_ had secured the greatest realm added to the Imperium. _He_ had the largest of the legions, the highest count of conquered worlds, the best strategy. _He_ was the correct choice. If the Emperor could not see that, he was no more worthy of being served than Gallan. He recalled every chapter of his legion to Macragge, and announced that henceforth it would be the capital of an independent Realm of Ultramar once more. The legion was somewhat skeptical, but they trusted his judgment, and given his track record had good reason to do so even without the hero-worship most displayed. They expanded the Realm, distributed the chapter fleets around its environs, and were given authority over the Administratum rather than vice versa, but, initially, little changed. If Slaanesh had already secured Roboute in its grip, his sons were blissfully ignorant.

As the Iron Line was constructed against them, this began to change. The Iron Sages considered themselves more architects than bureaucrats, but were in many ways the close mirror of the Ultramarines; they valued building over destroying, were exceedingly sharp, calculating analysts, and were considered haughty and prideful by their cousins from other legions. These two reflections, and their primarchs, began facing off in cold war, the Sages fencing in borders a few short Warp trips away from Ultramar's current frontier and the chapters on the frontier fortifying their conquests against retaliation. Meanwhile, closer to Macragge, Perturabo's disdain and the war footing were fueling paranoia in Guilliman and the Ultramarines leadership. Mechanicum forces in Ultramar were placed under suspicion of conspiring to betray the Realm to the Vigilus Marchensis. Outlying fleets were recalled for loyalty tests. Addendums to the Codex Astartes, never particularly rare, became increasingly common, and where they had covered broad areas of strategy or revisions to tactics in light of new methods, they were now narrowly focused on how to correctly police civilian populations, with increasingly blatant premises that all civilians were suspect. Lateral thinkers became increasingly suspect; cynics and gadflies like Aeonid Thiel had always had their advancement delayed or denied, but increasingly they were put on punishment details and under suspicion of treachery. Thiel, then known as the Eternal Sergeant, for his low rank despite a phenomenal combat record, approached his Chapter Master and volunteered to take the various malcontents in a dedicated company to fight on the western fringes of Ultramar, some of the hardest fighting that was not against the Imperium. This was partially granted; Thiel was made lieutenant in an under-strength chapter (the "Crimson Penitents" chapter) under Captain Adallus and Chapter Master Steloc Aethon, both extremely loyal to Guilliman and with negative personal history with Thiel. The chapter was based on Ulixis, where they were in constant battle against the Hrud, and as suggested, several companies were gradually filled with those mistrusted marines who questioned the primarch's authority or merely their superiors. Naturally, the officer corps were not drawn from these, but from those considered extremely reliable in their loyalty.

As the cold war along the Iron Line gave way to skirmishes, Guilliman's paranoia deepened and spread across his legion. Marine spied on marine, loyalty oaths and ritualistic praise of Guilliman and the Ultramarines became mandatory, and public executions of 'traitors' became common. This remained subdued and, in the border worlds, subtle, and only the Iron Warriors and their associated Army regiments got first-hand exposure to it. To their later sorrow, other legions and primarchs largely discounted their reports as exaggerated by spite, and Horus continued efforts to resolve the dispute diplomatically.

The depravity of pride and institutional paranoia grew slowly during this time, but did not jump noticeably until the peace talks at Prandium. Civilians were under suspicion and frequently executed pour encourager les autres, and updates to the Codex Astartes on dealing with treasonous populaces and detecting sedition in the ranks were published regularly. Still, the Ultramar Army was only touched lightly by the reign of terror and the astartes themselves, though they increasingly lived in a climate of fear, were entirely safe from the bloody courts-martial. However, this changed after Prandium. Horus was assassinated, and Guilliman knew he had not ordered it. Unaware of the depths of corruption which had infected Malcador, he believed the killing was some kind of false flag by the Imperium and Horus was in hiding, rather than dead. This amplified his paranoia still further, and now even his own gene-sons were not safe from kangaroo courts.

As these early executions of astartes occurred, Thiel's "Crimson Penitents", by now 800 strong, made their move, executing their officers during a brief pacification campaign of a discontent human world and turning their two battle-barges toward the Imperium. The line brothers of the former chapter blackened their armor or scoured it back to the bare steel, but kept the red helmets which the Ultramarines had assigned them as a mark of censure, and they called their brotherhood the Red Rebels. Their ships were damaged and the Imperium suspicious of them, so they did not carry their message of how far Ultramar had fallen to the Imperial leadership for most of a year. Only in light of the Isstvan Accord were they at last believed.

The Ultramarines who fought on the world of Isstvan in the Drop Site Massacre were externally unchanged from their time in the great Crusade. They bore some new glyphs on their armor, but were not coated in blood or surrounded by daemons like the other traitor legions present. However, even then, other noted they had lost something in their minds. They attacked superior numbers and closed to duel champions when bombardment would have been better. They had already begun to be obsessed with proving their personal greatness. Over the course of the Heresy War, particularly when Guilliman set Ultramar aflame as a monument to his glory and created the Ruinstorm, this warping of their minds grew deeper. By the time of the Siege of Terra, the "Peerless Marines" of the 13th Legion were nearly uncontrollable on the battlefield, each company or even each single squad acting independently to showboat and count coup at the cost of strategic effectiveness.

After the War, the legion retreated to the Ruinstorm and through sacrificial rituals and the direct sorcery of their Daemon Primarch solidified it from an enormous Warp Storm into a smaller but still huge Warp Rift, later named the Evermaw or just "the Maw".

### Homeworld

The Ultramarines hail from Ultramar, once a model Civilized World but now a Daemon World of pride and grotesque monuments to the glory of the astartes and Guilliman himself. Hundred-foot sculptures of Guilliman in a triumphant, classical style are built from the still-living bodies of slaves. Thousands of blinded, half-mad slaves stumble through prayer paths constantly reciting the praises of "the Savior of Ultramar". Most other worlds within the Maw and near it also host a 'chapter' of Ultramarines, though despite the rigid 1000-man structure of a chapter many of these are warbands 100-strong or less. The one part of the Maw without Ultramarine presence is the Colchis system and the sector around it; these are the province of the Word Bearers, and the ancient enmity between their legions formed in the ashes of Monarchia ensures that they fight continual skirmishes, as much or more as they prosecute the Long War and fight in the Great Game for Slaanesh. 

### Combat Doctrine

The official policy of all Ultramarines chapters is a complex, versatile combined-arms approach as dictated by the Codex Astartes. In practice, the Codex has become nearly useless as a tactical and strategic guide due to the changes in armament and personnel from serving Slaanesh and the many modifications made by the paranoid, unhinged daemon primarch on Macragge.

The empirical preferences of the Ultramarines are for fast-moving, hyperactive close-quarters fighting, charging from place to place to attacks before retreating and crowing about their untouchability. This is aided by the astartes of the 13th legion legitimately being supernaturally stronger, faster, and more skilled than those of other gene-lines. It is hampered by their irrestible pride, which forces them to impose arbitrary, pointless restrictions on themselves in order to better demonstrate their prowess. 

On a broader tactical level, the main consequence of this pride is the very low usage of tanks, transports, and machines of war; it is nearly impossible to convince Peerless Marines to pilot vehicles, so only self-piloting vehicles are in common use among the Ultramarines. They do, however, make common use of Rapier mobile artillery, drop pods, and paratrooper deployment via single-use jump packs. The legion slaves and servitors pilot "Konor-pattern" Stormbirds and Thunderhawks altered to better fit this rapid-drop deployment style, strafing the battlefield laying down withering fire and leaving a trail of dropped astartes in their wake.

### Organization

On paper, the Ultramarines are still a unified legion. They profess to strictly follow the dictates of the Codex Astartes with respect to organization, tactics, and strategy, and when two 'chapters' fight each other, the cited casus belli is usually failure to honor the Codex correctly and therefore bringing shame upon the chapter and primarch. In truth, this is total fiction; the many centuries of updates to the Codex during Guilliman's fall and his first few centuries as a Daemon Prince make following it strictly neither possible nor wise. The chapters he organized his legion in were 1000 astartes each, equivalent to a battalion in any other legion, but the modern-day chapters usually number about 300 marines each, and the largest ones count as many as 5000. They are pure and simple warbands, and they use "failing to uphold the Codex" as a technical casus belli because they know it must be true, ignoring that it is equally true of their own chapter and the chapters of their allies. 

In some respects the chapters are consistent with each other and the Crusade-era legion, however. They maintain techmarines, now trained by the Dark Mechanicum, they call their Warp-manipulators "librarians", though in truth they are sorcerers more than psykers, and they even have Iterator marines who perform the role loyalists call Chaplains, inculcating the beliefs and spurring their brothers onward. Due to the psychological warping of the legion, the Iterator's main role is to keep their brothers on task and convince them that greater glory is to be found by accomplishing the chapter's strategic goals than by demonstrating personal excellence.

### Beliefs

The first and most important belief of every Ultramarine is this: they are the best in the universe. They have a firm, maniacal conviction that astartes are superior beings and Ultramarines are superior still. They venerate Guilliman as divine perfection, above even their patron Slaanesh. She Who Thirsts is revered as the means by which Guilliman achieved his perfection and the Dark Prince who may grant that same gift to worthy, peerless sons of Ultramar, but the first place in their hearts is for their primarch. That he is now but a fragment of Slaanesh and this faith is therefore ridiculously misplaced irritates and amuses Slaanesh by turns, and some outside observers believe that it persists primarily due to the machinations of Tzeentch.

As a corollary of their faith in their utter superiority to mortal men and other astartes, when not training or on the battlefield the Ultramarines indulge their every whims, since they clearly deserve better than anyone else. Exotic drugs, depraved sexual acts, meals of human flesh; all are every Ultramarine's by right, should he desire them. While pride is the first and foremost of their sins, all seven are well-represented, and the only feelings they consider sinful are doubt and shame.

### Geneseed

Physically, the Ultramarines are less mutated than any of their cousin legions who live in the Warp. Additional eyes, or fingers and feet replaced with tentacle-like growths, are common visible signs of Slaanesh's favor, but most mutations take the form of warping the marine's senses, allowing them to see or hear blasphemous energies, or in cases of particular favor stun anyone who meets a champion's gaze or listens to him speak by conveying those blasphemous sense-memories to others.

This lack of physical mutation means their geneseed purity has stayed acceptable despite the millennia of taint. They have an acceptance rate well below that of any loyalist gene-line, roughly one in a thousand recruits, but the population of Ultramar is large enough that they have sustained themselves adequately regardless. Persistent rumors suggest that some 'chapters' have been blessed by Slaanesh with the ability to father more astartes directly through sexual congress with captured slaves who have been corrupted from the service of the Emperor into willingly embracing Slaanesh. These have never been sustantiated, and most loyalist Apothecaries believe such a feat would be impossible even for a Great Power of Chaos. Nonetheless, the stories persist and recur down the centuries.

### Battlecry

"For Guilliman and Glory!" is required whenever multiple chapters deploy together. When operating independently, they vary widely. If a chapter has a unified cry, it will usually invoke the 'chapter master' of the warband. Equally common, though, is for every squad or individual to shout their own individual battle cry.


	14. Index Astartes: Legio XIIII, Death Guard

### Origins

The Fourteenth Legion's first cognomen was the Dusk Raiders, after their predilection for assaults in the half-light, exploiting enemy confusion in the poor visibility. This tactic echoed those used by the Albian clans on Terra, and the legion's preference for heavy infantry assaults was also similar to the Ironside proto-dreadnoughts Albia fielded; appropriate, considering that Legio XIIII was drawn from Albian stock. Their pre-primarch performance was extensive and distinguished, and they were considered the best heavy infantry in any legion, despite the very late recovery of their gene-father.

Mortarion had landed on the planet Barbarus, in the outer fringes of Segmentum Tempestus. It had a toxic atmosphere, breathable by unaugmented humans only in the low valleys, with alien witch-kings ruling from the mountaintops and fighting constant wars with each other using abominations of science (often created from the human serfs) and summoned daemon-beasts. Mortarion was discovered by one of these kings, the warlord Necare, on a battlefield as he was scouring the field for salvageable casualties and raw materials to replenish his army. Impressed by the human child's ability to breathe despite the toxic fumes, he adopted the boy. He did not trust him, though, and tested his endurance of the fumes at higher and higher heights until he found a point past which the boy, who he named "Mortarion" ("child of death") could not go. His old manor was converted into a secondary home where Mortarion could be raised, and he had a new fortress-manor built above the line Mortarion could not endure.

Mortarion absorbed the witch-king's lessons in strategy and tactics readily, but he was no fool, and could see his fear and distrust. The primarch could also see that he was not the same type of being as his 'father' or his servants, and though he fought at the head of the warlord's armies of animate corpses, mutant predators, and feral daemons, he felt no kinship and little loyalty toward them or toward Necare himself. His resentment built over months and then years, until a raiding party unexpectedly returned while he was inspecting fortifications, and he saw the human slaves being brought back to the warlord's flesh-labs to be used as raw material. He understood, then, that these men and women, who looked far more like him than did Necare or anyone else in his service, were his true kin, and that they lived below the toxic smog. Not long afterward, he overpowered the guards of the complex - a trivial feat for one of his strength - and descended into the valleys to seek them out.

He was initially mistrusted by the humans, since his size, pallor, and ability to breathe the toxic mist marked him as unlike them. He helped in the fields to the considerable extent of his ability, despite their distrust, but this did not ease much until the first time one of the witch-kings raided the village for raw materials to add to his armies. Mortarion took a great scythe and strode into the enemy army, slaughtering them and giving hope of victory, which the village had never experienced before. When the warlord withdrew into the smog where humans could not breathe, he thought himself safe, but Mortarion charged after him and cut him down. From this point on, he was accepted, and his teaching in tactics, strategy, and creation of weapons, armor, and crude breathing gear spread from his home village through the valleys of the planet. Soon enough, he was leading a small army to not just repulse attacks but follow the enemy to their home fortresses in the smog and dispatching them permanently. Because they traveled into the deadly smog and fought off the undead enemies, he called his soldiers the Death Guard.

When the Emperor arrived, Mortarion and his Barbaran Death Guard had defeated every witch-king but one; his 'foster-father' Necare, who had retreated to his fortress high in the smog where even Mortarion could not go. The Emperor met with Mortarion and challenged him to beat Necare himself, and if he could not, the Emperor would do it Himself, and Mortarion would kneel to him. Not one to back down from a challenge, Mortarion tried, but despite his breathing apparatus, he passed out shortly after he commenced his assault. The Emperor eliminated Necare and brought Mortarion back to the villages below, where he upheld his word and joined Him in the Great Crusade.

Upon taking command of his legion, he proclaimed "You are my unbroken blades. You are the Death Guard." The latter became the official name of Legio XIIII, but the former, "the Unbroken", was the name most of his Terran veterans, and many of his Barbaran recruits, used for themselves. He continued their past tactics of heavy infantry and massed assault, and added to it use of biological weapons, engineered plagues, and other destroyer-grade toxins. The legion made heavy use of Terminator armor, bartering with Forge Worlds for increased supply of the armor in exchange for lower supplies of vehicles. They also gained from Mortarion an intense skepticism of psykers and hatred for xenos, especially psychic ones. They fought on the frontier, more than any other legion save the White Scars, and accordingly got little accolades from the broader Imperium. Though they were decorated for exemplary performance many times, these plaudits were generally only known to high officers, and many Imperial Army forces they fought with knew nothing of them but their reputation for waging total war. This built some resentment among them, which may have contributed to their reactions to Nikea and subsequent defection.

Though several legions and primarchs objected to Malcador's Edict at Nikea, none were so vehement as Mortarion. He was vocal about considering it foxes guarding the henhouse, and about his distrust of Malcador exceeding even his well-known dislike for Magnus. A restriction on psykers enforced by the arch-psyker was, in his view, an obvious dead letter, which could not reign in the excesses which merited the Council of Nikea in the first place. He refused to abide by it, forbidding any psykers in his legion from taking the Sanction and guarding them closely, much as he had done before. His legion also continued its hard-line treatment of psykers; all were treated as enemy combatants, even children and Imperium rebels who were soul-bound to the Emperor. This gradually became noticed, but Horus sought to convince him to follow the edict by persuasion and resisted pressure from the Thousand Sons and Dark Angels to censure Mortarion and his sons. They still cooperated with other elements of the Crusade, so he was willing to overlook their failings. Whether the Emperor agreed is unknown, but it is likely it never reached His attention.

His discontent also did not go unnoticed in darker corners. Vulkan and his patron Tzeentch, and Lorgar and his sorcerer-apostles, both divined that Mortarion's loyalty was fragile. They resolved to sway him to the cause of rebellion. Vulkan sent an emissary requesting he meet in person, to discuss alternatives to following the Emperor. He also stated, truthfully, that of the dread beings in the Warp, the youngest appeared shortly before the Emperor began his first conquests on Terra, devouring the Eldar in the process, and that if this was not coincidence, it suggested ill about the Emperor's intentions for humanity. Mortarion, naturally, accepted, and planned to meet at the deserted world of Kharaatan. Mortarion touched down on the planet's surface without incident and walked into the small building where he was to meet Vulkan privately. He was there only a few moments before Vulkan entered from the door opposite. At that moment, Vulkan's careful planning was thoroughly derailed.

Though he did not advertise the fact or often use the capability, Mortarion had, during his time on Barbarus, developed a strong sense for psykers, smelling their psychic signature like a bad odor. Immediately upon the door opening and Vulkan entering, he smelled the strongest psyker he had ever encountered besides the Emperor, immediately in front of him. With a shout, he slammed into Vulkan and knocked him through the wall. He stepped in to continue his assault, but thought better of it, spit on his brother, and stormed out, knocking down several sentries who tried to question him with a single slap. Leaving three marines broken and one a corpse along his path back to the airstrip, he immediately left the planet in his Thunderhawk at hard burn. Rendezvousing with the nondescript cruiser he had brought to the system, his crew's surprise at seeing the immediate, apparently hostile departure grew still more when he disembarked. His Equerry, Caipha Morarg, noted that he had never seen him so enraged, and asked what had gone wrong.

Mortarion replied "Vulkan is another psyker, as foul or worse than Malcador and my-" he spit "-father. We will find no allies here."

Morarg said, "Then what shall the Unbroken do, my lord?"

Mortarion's reply became famous in the following millennia: "Burn it all. Burn the guilty, burn the righteous. Burn the ashes. We trust none but our own from this day forth."

Speculation among the scholars responsible for the study of Chaos is rife about why this occurred. Vulkan served Tzeentch, the Architect of Fate and Master of Fortune, the Chaos God most adept at prophecy, and should have known that Mortarion would notice his psychic nature and not react well to it. And yet, he tried anyway. Most speculation thinks that Vulkan or Tzeentch believed that without this moment of rage, Mortarion would fight with the loyalists in the coming war. A minority view instead holds that the minor god Malal the Opposer, who would later become the patron of the Death Guard, was even then watching over Mortarion, and intervened to foil the plots of Tzeentch and in so doing ensure that the Death Guard were isolated and in a position to enter the minor god's service.

Mortarion's cruiser was a Siluria-class and did not have virus bomb capability, so his instruction could not be carried out. It's unclear whether it was intended literally, especially since he would certainly have known that armament wasn't available. In any case, they launched a heavy bombing load on the site of the meeting, and departed to rejoin their legion and take it independent from the Imperial command structure. At this point, their disloyalty was sufficiently extreme that Horus noted it was time to rein them in, but his priority was the talks with Guilliman at Prandium, which were soon to begin. Horus was assassinated on the first day of those talks, and the Crusade suffered an extended leadership vacuum which would not be resolved until the Siege of Terra. By the time there was an Imperial leader capable of taking action to rein in the Death Guard, they were far too entrenched in their treason to bring into the fold, and so they stood independent until the Reconquest came to their door.

The traitor side did make another attempt to enlist Mortarion in the meantime. Despite their disagreements over the Librarius project and great differences in their ways of battle, Jaghatai Khan and Mortarion saw each other as kindred spirits, and during the middle years of the Heresy War, the Khagan sought his brother out. Their argument was tense, and blades were drawn, but it did not, quite, come to blows. Jaghatai insisted that the Imperium was corrupt and needed to be destroyed, to which Mortarion agreed, but countered that the traitor leadership were no better than the Emperor, calling Vulkan particularly a "witch-beast with only a thin coat of human flesh remaining on him". As they avoided conflict in this case, they also avoided conflict between their legions; the Death Guard raided many traitor fleets and worlds, but did not take the field against White Scars contingents, even when they contained Stormseers. Several centuries later, when Jaghatai led his Great Scourge against the Imperium, he sought out the Death Guard again, asking them to join forces. Mortarion again refused, saying that the Khagan had sold his soul to the witch-beasts and he would have no part in that. At that time, they fought outright, with the Khagan inflicting painful first blood on the Death Lord and then withdrawing, his point adequately made. Down to the modern day, the Death Guard show less animus toward the White Scars than any other force of Chaos.

In the later stages of the Reconquest, the Death Guard retreated from their native Barbarus into a nearby Warp anomaly, the Siren's Storm, which slowly moves and crosses around a subsector of space each decade. The planet they chose as their primary home is named Deathshome, and was not initially a Daemon World. However, as they centuries passed, living primarily in the Warp changed them; the obsession-based warping that afflicts all mortals who live in the Warp mutated them more slowly than in true Warp Rifts like the Eye and Maw, but they slowly found that their armaments fused with their armor and refused to function for any other marine, and they felt "phantom limb" syndrome for both whenever they were outside it. The steady grind of raiding innocent human populations for survival, isolation from all but their brothers, and growing self-hatred for becoming the witch-beasts they despised, pushed the Death Guard into an empty nihilism yearning for meaning, and coincided with a drastic drop in their numbers over the course of a few decades. Their existential agony led the Unbroken to attack Chaos more and more, as if to declare to the universe that they were not the fallen witches they inwardly believed themselves to be. Even Mortarion was not immune; not long after his failed duel with the Khagan, he discovered that The Barbaran Plate, his great power armor, was no longer fully removable in most places; its lower layers had fused with his skin.

This continued, with the Death Guard slowly acquiring Talon, Mutilator, and Obliterator squads warped by their obsessive styles of combat, and all its brothers falling deeper into the abyss of self-hatred and nihilist rage. It changed in M34.950, when the Siren's Storm grew close enough to the Barbaran system that they could safely retake it and safely retreat beyond the Imperium's reach if needed. Mortarion and the portion of his first-battalion veterans born on Barbarus triumphantly entered the system and made to land. There, they found that it was unrecognizable. In the absence of a population to exterminate, the Imperium had unleashed continent-levelling weaponry on the world; the mountains had been smashed to rubble and filled in the valleys and the poison air chemically burned. Barbarus of M34 was a massive rubblefield, with the only recognizable features being the solid bases of once-mountains and the unstable rubble piles of once-valleys.

Mortarion's memory was, of course, excellent, so even from these scans he was able to determine which mountain had been the site of his adoptive father's fortress. He descended to that site alone, with despair in his heart, to see what the planet now was. He knew from orbital scans, though he did not admit it even to himself, that returning his legion to Barbarus would be a disaster. Nonetheless, he needed to see for himself.

What passed on Barbarus's surface, he never shared, even with his equerry and confidant Morarg. But when he returned to his legion, he spoke privately to their master Chaplains. From that point on, their counsel to the legion was changed in nature: they did not seek to console them about the self-hatred and lack of meaning in their lives, but instead told them to direct that hatred outward, at the universe which had forced them to this extreme. They would, as their primarch had once said, burn it all; the guilty and the righteous, the human and the xeno. They would inflict their pain on the rest of creation; this was not justice, no, but it was fair. Reconstructing events, most outside observers agree that Malal met the Death Lord on the field of Barbarus, and he swore himself and his sons into the Anarch's service.

They did not change rapidly in behavior, whether because they did not enter Malal's service wholesale or because, as a weaker god, its influence was subtler than the Four's effects on their chosen legions. Their white and green livery became white and black, and their raids became more vicious, but it was not for several centuries that they took on the distinctive checkered and counterchanged black and white that is Malal's emblem, and replaced the skull from their loyalist-era heraldry with the stylized pseudo-skull which is his symbol.(The spiked ball behind it was changed to green.) They were never seen to appear in aid of the common men of the Imperium after their rediscovery of Barbarus, but that was a rare sight in the centuries before it, so this means very little.

In the time after they were visibly committed to Malal's service, they were seen far more widely spread across the galaxy. Their raids emerge from every minor Warp Storm and Rift in the Imperium sporadically, though the Siren's Storm remained their base of operations. Around when they changed their livery wholesale, that storm halted its motion, now slowly circling the Barbaran system at about a subsector's distance. They appear to use Barbarus as a shrine and a testing ground for their initiates.

The official Imperial policy on them is containment; the sector surrounding Barbarus is largely given up as lost, and they are met in force only when they raid further than it or emerge from another storm. This is partially because they are much smaller than the other surviving traitor legions, but primarily because they raid xenos and the other forces of Chaos more viciously than they do the Imperium. The Mutilator Contagion, a Warp-based plague that affects only the servants of Chaos and destroys their minds as it fuses them with their armor, originated as a weapon unleashed by the Death Guard. Forces recognizable as Mutilators and Obliterators existed before this time, but they were dramatically less common and retained far more of their minds. The contagion also affects the Death Guard to an extent, but Malal's favor makes the mental effects much more manageable. They are also known to have sabotaged several attempts at expansion from the forces of the Eye and Maw, including foiling attempts to create Warp Rifts in several systems near the Iron Line and the other Imperial/Nihilus border regions. The sons of Malal are as destructive as other Chaos legions, but unlike others, their destruction does not spread; they leave worlds in ruins, but the cults do not escape to other worlds, but self-immolate knowingly and deliberately. A world which falls to Malal is rarely subjected to Exterminatus, for it exterminates itself without Imperial intervention.

### Homeworld

Before the Heresy War and for several centuries after it, the Death Guard protected their primarch's home planet of Barbarus. Towards the end of the Reconquest, however, the forces of he resurgent Imperium, having removed most of the largest galactic threats, amassed in force to destroy the renegades. The legion and the remaining human population of the planet withdrew in good order, and took refuge in the Siren's Storm, a slow-moving low-grade Warp Rift. The world they settled in it, which they named Deathshome, was mountainous like Barbarus, but here the peaks had clean air and only a few scattered valleys were toxic. It was not a Daemon World, and its corruption, though present, was subtle and insidious. The civilian population farms large terraced fields built on the slopes of the mountains, and undergo rites of passage in the poison valleys below.

As the centuries passed and the legion fell into the sway of Malal, Deathshome deteriorated. Many terrace farms fell into disrepair, the wildlife became stranger and fiercer, and villages became fortified and frequently at war with each other. The planet and its sun also have been swept along with the Siren's Storm, crossing a few subsectors every century. In later millennia, as Malal was strengthened by the allegiance of the Death Guard, Deathshome became a true Daemon World. The bone-and-scale insectile daemons of Malal began to live in every valley, and mountain paths warped to allow any village to easily make war on any other, whether their peaks were neighboring or antipodal. For trade or peace, however, any journey must descend to the hell-valleys and climb the mountains from their bases.

Barbarus was partially reclaimed in that period, but it had been leveled by the Reconquest, and so acts as a training world and religious site, rather than a recruiting world like most traitor homeworlds.

### Combat Doctrine

The doctrine of the Death Guard is simple: total annihilation by any means necessary. Large-scale use of phosphex and rad weaponry is embraced, and while virus bombing is frowned on as empowering Nurgle, it is used occasionally alongside other means of lighting up entire planets. Despite their hatred of witches early in their history, their turn to Malal made them embrace their self-loathing and become what they hated; "Hellburner" psyker-sorcerers are now well-established in their legion, though most go out in a blaze of glory, destroying a world by burning out their psychic gift and, in most cases, their life; accordingly, while psykers are more common per-recruit than in most loyalist orders or traitor legions, experienced psykers are rare; only about 40% of their Warpburners live out a full century after implantation.

Their battle-line troops are primarily ranged specialists, though not all to the degree of a Devastator or Havoc squad in another legion. Virtually all squads have at least one heavy weapon, usually a flamer or missile launcher, and more wield storm bolters than the standard variety. Assault squads favor chainswords, flamers, and destroyer-grade grenades, and virtually all are deployed with jump packs.

Daemon engines are rare and distrusted by the legion; the oaths extracted by the Forge of Souls go against the core of their hatred of all things Chaotic. Warpsmiths and Hellforged vehicles, which had non-daemon souls integrated, are welcomed, and make up a substantial chunk of their forces. Based on their abundant supply of vehicles and equipment, outside observers believe that there is a dedicated Hell Forge which works only with their legion, probably but not definitely one established in the Siren's Storm long after the Heresy War. Whether this world is sworn to Malal, has some other form of omnicidal nihilism, or is merely in an alliance of convenience with the Death Guard is unknown.

Because the Mutilator Contagion is Malal-made, the Mutilators and Obliterators of the Death Guard are more mentally and physically flexible. They have more control over their changes of form, and particularly favored Mutilators and Obliterators can shift their weaponry from close-combat to ranged or vice versa for short periods.

### Organization

The numbers of the Death Guard have rebounded somewhat from their ebb of five under-strength battalions shortly before reclaiming Barbarus; they are now organized in 11 battalions, each with 11 companies. Each battalion usually deploys in two to four different theaters at any given time, following whichever officers its marines consider worthy of leadership. The structure of the battalion is much like a loyalist order, with Hellburners as Librarius and Null Priests as Chaplains. Off the battlefield, however, the roles of Null Priests and Hellburners are exchanged. Hellburner's self-annihilation makes them seen as truer vessels of Malal's will and so act as spiritual counselors and leaders of rites; because they are short-lived, they are poor custodians of lore, and so the history and collected wisdom of the legion is stewarded by the Null Priests. In battle, the Null Priests rally their brothers and demoralize their enemies, while the Hellburners focus on their destructive psychic gifts.

### Beliefs

The Imperial military frequently preach the virtue of holy hatred, but compared to the Death Guard they are rank amateurs. The sons of Mortarion hated everything in the universe with a sheer passionate focus that no one, even Khorne himself, can match. They do not except their brothers, or even themselves, from this hatred; they hate all servants of Chaos, and serve Chaos; they hate all relics of the Imperium, and are relics of the Imperium; they hate hypocrites, and are the greatest hypocrites of all. They know this, and consider self-loathing a core religious practice of Malal's worship. They cultivate it, nurture it, and take the suffering it engenders and turn it outward as a weapon, sacrificing themselves to ruin that which their enemies have built.

They think of the Imperium as a puppet wielded by a long-dead puppetmaster, with only fools around to guide its mindless, shuffling steps. The other forces of Chaos they view as puppets of mindless puppeteer gods, only barely worthy of contempt. They have much lower rates of Daemon Princes than other traitor legions, less because Malal can empower fewer and more because they do not truly wish for immortality. Those daemon princes who were chosen by Malal usually were not seeking the elevation and hope to someday be absorbed into the greater mind of Malal and so cease to have independent consciousness.

### Geneseed

Malal's influence has altered the form and some of the minor properties of the astartes implants, but other than the Mutilator Contagion the legion's geneseed is in very good condition. However, suicide in a Warp-tainted area does tend to contaminate geneseed, so geneseed collection is somewhat limited. No detailed study of whether geneseed flaws are partially responsible for that suicide rate is possible, but outside observers do not consider it likely.

### Battlecry

"Oblivion flies with us!" or "Burn it all!". In fights against mindless enemies, they may instead use a rallying cry of "Unbroken! Unbowed!"


	15. Index Astartes: Legio XV, Thousand Sons

### Index Astartes - Thousand Sons/Magnificat

### Origins

The initial marines of the Fifteenth Legion were recruited from the Achaemenid Empire, an established part of the Emperor's holdings which had recovered from the early stages of the Unification Wars by the time of the founding. The large population was tested, every family with young sons having them checked for compatability. Since this legion's geneseed was among the most tempramental and unadaptable, this first selection picked out only fifteen hundred boys. Even so, a third did not survive the implantation process; a small Warp storm hit the Sol system at the time of implantation, causing psychic outbreaks across the planets, but it is unclear whether this was related or had any effect on the failure rate. They spent a few months taking on isolated pockets of resistance on Terra in a test run, and received the name "Thousand Sons" from the Emperor. (Their number was not precisely a thousand at this time; their strength when first deployed was 1013, and when given the name by the Emperor 997. The poetic name was picked regardless.) After this, their recruitment was expanded to draw further from the Achaemenids and from across Terra and the other worlds of the system, which brought them up to legion strength by two years from their founding. They remained among the smallest legion, however, never exceeding fifty thousand before Magnus.

Three years later, the already high rate of psychic abilities in the legion began to increase dramatically, and six months after it began, every marine of the legion was a psyker, though many were fairly weak ones. Unfortunately, nine months later, the first instance of the flesh-change occurred: a rapid process of mutation that would often begin to overwhelm a Thousand Son when he pushed his psychic gift anywhere near its limits. Short of never using their psychic abilities, this seemed impossible to prevent, and its psychic nature meant it was somewhat contagious and could spread from one astartes to the next, affecting even those who did not use their gifts. The time to fully devolve a marine from man to beast varied, but in most cases was at least a few days, and so where possible the marines in its early stages were placed in stasis chambers, hopefully to await a cure. The flesh-change only grew worse over time, so the legion's numbers fell and fell. In a decade, they had dropped from fifty thousand to twenty thousand; in another, to six thousand. They withdrew from the Crusade entirely and focused on conserving geneseed and using as little psykery as possible to forestall the flesh-change while the Emperor, his magoi, and the Apothecaries and Techmarines of the legion tried to find a solution.

This state of affairs continued until the discovery of Magnus. The rate of lost brothers had slowed, but when Prospero was reintegrated and Magnus recovered, his legion again stood at barely a thousand men. He returned to Terra with the Emperor, and since he had corresponded with and learned from his father psychically for many years, he immediately joined the flesh-change research. His psychic gifts added a significant new aspect to the search, but nonetheless he spent several years of attempts with nothing to show for it. Despairing, he contemplated delving into the Deep Warp, which he could see was somehow connected to the abrupt onset and severity of the flesh-change. Before doing so, though, he contacted his Father and asked for assistance doing so safely. The Emperor refused, and forbade him to do it alone; there were terrors, he said, well beyond anything Magnus had experienced and perhaps beyond his imagining, and fates much worse than the flesh-change which awaited him and his sons if he dealt with those terrors. Magnus professed skepticism that any fate could be much worse; the Emperor's reply was a psychic image of a soul fused with an enormous parasite, the details of which cannot be conveyed in words, for those who can perceive it do not need words to communicate. This momentary picture took Magnus aback and, chagrined, he promised to obey the prohibition. A few weeks later, though, he returned, his despair redoubled, begging the Emperor to give him some tool he might use to help his sons, perhaps the principles underlying the soul-binding used for Astropaths. Instead, the Emperor shared the theory that underlay the Astronomican, and how a single unitary presence could be broadcast through the Warp to provide stability.

Creating the first device using this principles took Magnus a year and a day of work, but at the end he had a Lesser Light; a device using a soul-bound psyker as an anchor and a second psyker as a power source to amplify the anchor signal. This created a sphere of calmness and relative safety in the Warp, ranging from a weak mortal talent covering a small moon, to a weak psyker astartes covering most of a system, to Magnus himself covering an entire sector and much of its neighbors. The field it generated provided rigid structure to the Warp within it, which reduced the psychic abilities of those within noticeably, but reduced the ability of outside forces to affect its interior to a much greater degree. This did not halt the flesh-change, but it did remove its contagious properties, and rather than it taking days or weeks to progress, it now took months or years. He christened the design a "Stathican", but in Low Gothic they were usually called Lesser Lights. With Magnus available to provide new geneseed and this Stathican, and two more, to provide protection, the Fifteenth Legion expanded, finally reaching the "proper" legion strength of a hundred thousand, and took the field once more. Their powers were reduced, but they no longer needed to hold back, and they were terrifying to behold. Magnus and most of his Techmarines built additional Stathicans on Prospero; Magnus built two in concert with his sons while teaching them, and they built the sixth under his supervision but without his direct input. Satisfied with their progress, he entrusted them with building more, and he departed, first to lead his sons in battle elsewhere in the galaxy, and then to return to Terra with the Emperor to work on his secret Webway project after Ullanor.

While Magnus was away, he was not totally out of contact with his legion; with his power, his familiarity with them, and the use of the Stathicans acting as miniature beacons like their 'elder brother' the Astronomican, he conducted regular Warp seances to speak with them, providing guidance and being given status updates. This did not allow him to supervise their explorations of psychic abilities, however, and emboldened by the protections of the Stathican, they investigated things that were best left untouched, feeling immune to the consequences. This ran substantial risks, but no one, inside or out of the legion, grasped the significance. There were no externally visible incidents, which bolstered their case at Nikea; despite the absence of Magnus and the Emperor, and the severe reservations on the parts of Leman Russ, Mortarion, and others, the mild Sanction of Malcador was judged sufficient. Of the eighty thousand astartes in the Thousand Sons at this time, less than three thousand refused the Sanction and preferred to give up the use of their gifts. Accordingly, the Sigilite visited Prospero frequently, and developed close bonds with many of the Sons; closer even than with their distant Primarch, in a number of cases. His supervision was strict at first, but as he grew confident and relaxed, it became looser, and unsanctioned psychic research (never _truly_ stopped) resumed behind his back.

But a reckoning, as they say, will not be postponed indefinitely. And the Siege of Prospero brought that reckoning to fruition. The Space Wolves attacked worldwide, launching planet-killing weapons and assaulting the cities personally. All those in the system were already wulfen, fully fallen to Khorne and shrugging off psychic assaults like water, and so they made quick work of everywhere but the capital city of Tizca, where the core of the legion and their mortal auxiliaries erected huge psychic barriers the wulfen could not easily penetrate. Still protected by the system Stathican, their powers were great and even Russ himself could not break their shields. But then the Great Wolf brought the reckoning; his Wolf Priests divined the location of the Stathican, on one of Tizca's moons, and they assaulted it, killing the astropath providing the signal's shape. He could not destroy the mechanisms of the device effectively, but it was disrupted long enough; the price of dangerous Warp manipulation came due all at once, and all across Tizca, marines mutated into enormous monstrosities, daemons emerged and commenced rampages, and psychic spells escaped the control of their creators to spread wildly across the city. The shields fell, the wulfen attacked, and the civilian psykers were slaughtered in great numbers before Russ had even retaken the field.

It was less than an hour before the guardians of the Stathican has restored it. But in that time, three quarters of the legion was already dead or daemon-possessed. The streets of Tizca were chaos, and after setting the city aflame, Bloody Russ the Daemonwulf, now a Daemon Prince of Khorne, took several hundred skulls of remaining civilians and left the rest to burn. The Sons, for their part, barely noticed; one powerful daemon and several battalions of Wulfen had left, but thousands of daemons were still at large.

In the Great Pyramid of Photep, Magnus' personal sanctum when he had led Prospero personally, a group of wise men gathered. Many had declined Malcador's Sanction and given up their psychic gifts, whether because their talents were weak or because they had seen the flesh-change too closely to want to risk it. Of those present who had accepted the sanction, almost all were Prosperan elders; the half-astartes who had led Prospero before Magnus, and the older true astartes recruited from Prospero who had studied the psychic arts there before the coming of the Emperor. Many of the leaders of the mortal Prosperan psykers were also gathered with them. They had been wise enough to not go beyond the limits of safety with the Stathican down, and saw the chaos around them. They knew that Tizca could not hold, nor could they hold Photep as a fortress indefinitely. But they did not know what else to do.

In the midst of this gathering, Amon called the group to order. Amon was the foster-father of the primarch, reckoned second in knowledge only to Magnus himself, and Magister of Five-and-Three, responsible for leading all specialist elements of the legion, with authority to command both the five Magister Templi of the Cults and the three Masters of the Red Orders. Covertly going against the Emperor’s wishes, Magnus had entrusted part of the purpose of the secret project on Terra to his one-time mentor; it was a means of transportation, and there was a sealed entrance on Prospero, near Tizca. Having gathered their attention, Amon divulged that Magnus had entrusted him with a secret, to be used only in direst need, which provided a path to safety. He had made a binding oath, on his life and power, not to share its nature, but he could guide them to the path's location, which was not far from Tizca. Despite the oath, he was able to guide the loyal half-battalion through the streets to the closed gate. They sustained losses and attracted attention, which only grew as the cleverer daemons present observed they were moving with purpose. In the cellar of a hermitage, Amon and seventeen of his brothers reached out to Magnus, calling for him to open the door. Unfortunately, what could be heard faintly on Terra was a daemonic dinner bell on Prospero, and the few hundred marines around them came under heavy attack. Though wiser than their kin, the desperate defense pushed many beyond the limits of caution; none were possessed or turned against their fellows, but as the hours passed many felt the daemonic taint take hold in subtler ways.

On Terra, the Emperor had felt it. He understood what had happened immediately, and his fury at Magnus’s betrayal of His trust was palpable to psykers as far away as Neptune. The Red Giant pleaded, prostrate before his father, that it was knowledge his father and Son had, bound never to be shared further and only to be used in the utmost need. He pled that if this signal was sent, it meant his sons were dying and Prospero would soon be lost, if it wasn't totally lost already. Though His heart was hard, the Emperor relented after a day and a night, and opened the gate to the unfinished webway. The loyal marines poured in, but as they paused on the threshold the tainted ones recoiled. They could not deny it; the Emperor’s light shone from within and it was anathema to a piece of their being now. When the evacuation began, 203 marines and 13 mortal psykers protected the gateway; when it was closed, 103 and 8 had turned back, determined to spend their dying breaths allowing their untainted comrades to pass to safety.

They succeeded. The hundred and five passed through the doorway and shut it behind them, and began the long, slow walk to Terra. When they arrived, it was to grim news. Horus was dead, at least six more legions in rebellion, four legions slaughtered to half their numbers or less at Isstvan, and the Heresy War well underway. To make matters worse, their primarch was chained to the Golden Throne, powering the Astronomican. The Emperor, it seems, had to remain within the Webway; the glimpse of its use on Prospero had taught Chaos enough to attack it, and they ate at it on all fronts.

They paused only to entrust their gene-seed to the Terran vaults established by the Imperial Fists before returning to the webway to fight beside their Emperor and his Custodes. As they gathered around the Throne, in sight of their gene-father but unable to communicate, they rededicated themselves. They were the Thousand Sons no longer, but the Centuria Magnifica. It is said that in the excruciating pain powering the Astronomican was for Magnus, he was unable to move a muscle. Yet, remembrancers present all agreed; at this renaming, Magnus smiled.

Those who survived the dangerous trip all were, by genetic luck or training in extremis, more formidable than most Veteran marines, and their psychic gifts amplified by struggle and - they believe - the favor of their primarch. So despite the desperate battle they entered and the illustrious comrades in arms, they sustained the comparatively low rate of 20% losses during the War for the Webway. They emerged, battered but victorious, only in the final hours of the Siege of Terra, after Bel'cador - the entity formed from the possession of Malcador's empty shell by the ancient daemon prince Be'lakor - mounted a last-ditch assault and the Emperor and his combined forces destroyed it. So as the Phoenician, Vulkan, and the Twin Pilgrims mustered a coordinated, last-ditch assault to take the palace before their forces' coordination disintegrated entirely, the Centuria were at the Emperor's left hand and the remaining Custodes at his right.

The Emperor understood the vastness of the challenge that awaited him, with three of his greatest sons arrayed against him, each blessed with considerable immaterial might by the Dark Gods, and the Phoenician with all the might they could squeeze into the large vessel that was a primarch. Therefore, for the final duel, he forbade the Custodes and Centurions from following him, taking only primarchs and a dozen companies of the cream of the remaining astartes defenders with him. To the great Constantin Valdor, first among equals of the Custodes, and to Amon, foster father of Magnus and leader of the Centurions who had escaped through the webway, he entrusted instructions; implicit in them was the assumption that he would be victorious, but die in the process.

The end result of that final confrontation was better than the Emperor had anticipated; he died, but remained long enough to be brought to Magnus, commune with him briefly, and overwrite Magnus's mind with a fraction of his own. To Magnus, who was a scholar first, a loyal son second, and anything else well after that, it was a choice made with regret, but with no doubt as to the result. This fusion was the Imperial Vestige, and his three decade rule over the Imperium reorganized it thoroughly, seeking to build a durable polity from what had been intended as a temporary stopgap until the Human Webway Project - now impossible to complete - was ready to host galactic humanity.

As part of that reorganization, the Custodes were dissolved. Their handcrafted nature was ill-suited to the long haul, and their gifts were needed more in other orders. Of the [DATA EXPUNGED] major orders then established, the first was the Magnificat. They would be the memory of the Imperium, and the protectors and trainers of psykers throughout it. Their membership came from the Centuria Magnifica and the Custodes, with new gene-seed drawing from the Emperor's own genome, the Custodes, and the Centurions, producing a tempramental and slow implantation process but also an order which was nearly free of the flesh-change that had plagued the Thousand Sons while they were outside the reach of the stathicans. THe stathicans were adapted back to the design they had been based on, the Astronomican, and the battle-barges of Legio XV were rebuilt into platforms and amplifiers for these devices, each with a slightly different immatterial emission pattern which allowed Navigators more detailed reference points for navigating the Warp, and allowed the Imperium to venture beyond the reach of the - now weaker - Astronomican with a concerted effort and a gathering of these new Astronomicarks.

### Homeworld

The Magnificat have only one planet with a standing population, which is Terra Herself, where they maintain the primary Astronomican and power it in shifts. It is not, however, the home of their leadership or even their most politically powerful outpost. The Light-Captains of the Astronomicarks are the presiding council, with the captains of older ships holding a nominal precedence that has never been explicitly exercised; on the few occasions where they see fit to render a collective decision for the entire Magnificat, they debate until there is a supermajority (initially, 4 of 5; the Light-Warden of Terra did not vote) in agreement. The initial fleet they left Terra with had five ships; three more were retrofitted from Thousand Sons battle-barges recovered during the Reconquest, upgrading the Stathicans of the Sons into full portable Astronomicans. Though attrition has been light, construction of further arks has always remained slow, so as of 900.M41 there are 17 Astronomicarks in service.

Only the very largest conflicts have ever destroyed an ark; the larger Black Crusades, the War of the Beast and a few other large-scale Waaaaghs!, and in one case a conflict with the entirety of an Eldar Craftworld and twice that number in Exodite and Corsair allies. Jaghatai Khan's Great Scourge, the first Black Crusade, destroyed three, a total no other has equaled; only a few Black Crusades have ever managed two. Another notable incident was The Great Mekwaaagh!, which saw Mek-Boss Sokkraidees Starshoota specifically seek out and commandeer an ark; he was eventually defeated and the ark recovered, but the refurbishment necessary to repair the "kustomizin'" it had suffered took over a century.

### Combat Doctrine

Teaching and lorekeeping are the primary duties of the Magnificat, especially teaching Librarians from the many other Ordos Astartes. When they go to war personally, it is as a counterpunch against Black Crusades, to remove raiders who have been hiding outside the reach of the Astronomican, or as a massive force multiplier to a large astartes force waging war on some xenos threat. Since the death of the Emperor, they have had few equals in the strength of their psychic powers; the Daemon Primarch Vulkan possesses greater sorcerous might than the Light-Captains, and a few Ordos Astartes claim their best librarians outmatch them, but they deny it, and have cause to. In duels of pure sorcery, Light-Captains have defeated Ferrus Manus, Guilliman, and Mortarion, and held Russ and the Twin Pilgrims at bay. (When the daemon primarchs have managed to confront them physically, every traitor primarch has, of course, won the day.)

Because of their awesome power, small number, and low replacability, the Magnificat are used as the speartip, a few squads making huge-scale concerted attacks in a high-value area, often clearing the void defenses for most of a hemisphere to allow a large force of 'normal' astartes to land unopposed, and then providing overwatch and prognostication to guide the assault below. When a Daemon Primarch is sighted, at least one Ark will come to the aid of the defenders, and all its marines will engage in a joint-arms attack, suppressing their corrupt psychic power in order to give all others a chance to fight them on even ground.

### Organization

For the most part, each Ark operates independently. They are in regular contact to coordinate travel schedules for adequate coverage of the Imperium and the portions of Segmentum Nihilus currently within the Imperial sphere of influence. The order serfs of the Arks include skilled astropaths, and using the sympathetic connections between lights allows much more reliability, message size and comprehensibility, and range; accordingly, high-priority messages which must be disseminated across the Imperium often make use of the Arks. (The true Astronomican on Terra is not possible to link into this communications network without impeding its function, which limits the ability to use the network routinely.)

With an Ark's "order", structure is ad-hoc and flexible. Seniority is based on skill, knowledge, and power, in that order, and other than the Light-Captains and the teaching positions which train astartes Librarians and non-astartes Sanctioned Psykers, few official titles exist; nearly every man of the Magnificat is called simply "Centurion". (The name is still used, despite their numbers well exceeding a century even on a per-ship basis.) Centurions inducted at the same time usually form squads who do combat training together and usually form study groups for psychic and academic matters; these are small, three to eight men each, and unofficial, but are usually used in combat situations as they are most practiced and reliable. For larger organization, the Magnificat mirrors the practices of the Thousand Sons; the Cults based around psychic disciplines, with each having a recognized though informal structure and collaborating in study, research, and ritual of that discipline. The Magnificat call them Path-Brotherhoods, but their nature has not changed; the Path Raptora, Path Corvidae, Path Pavoni, and Path Athanaean are essentially unchanged, though the Path Raptora now also includes the Cult Pyrae. Two of three Red Brotherhoods are also subsumed into Paths; the Order of Ruin became the Path Praeparati, which studies numerology, logistics, and producing supernaturally fast and accurate conclusions from disparate data, and the Order of Blindness became the Path Abslepe, which covers illusions and means of moving quickly and undetectably.

Several other Paths are studied; the Path Janii encompasses theosophamy - the control of Warp breaches, banishing of daemons, and disruption of the links between body and soul - and is one of the few whose membership and skill level are officially tracked. All psychic disciplines the Magnificat are aware of have students within its ranks, even the strange Ork Power of the WAAAAGH! and Tyranid powers, but study of daemonology - which includes, besides summoning daemons, all direct manipulation of Warp energy in its natural state - is only permitted to accomplished walkers of the Path Janii, and no experimental use of daemonology is permitted except in the presence of several masters of the path who are not participating in the ritual. Theosophamy is a counter-art to daemonology, and developing new techniques within it requires some expertise with its "evil twin"; additionally, while the use of daemonology is fraught with risk, it is extremely powerful and allows feats such as teleportation and the "True Sanctuary" power, which forbids all daemons and psychic powers other than itself from being used or affecting its interior. Other paths include the Path Custode, which channels the spirit of the Emperor himself for protection against enemy psykers and sorcerers, the Path Omnissiah, which is mechanokinetic, the Path Ogham, which studies the rune magic of the Eldar, and the Path Cladetis, which studies the Ork and Tyranid psy-craft.

### Beliefs

As it was for their legion, the Magnificat's motto is "Knowledge is Power; Guard it Well". They know themselves to be the foremost link to the Emperor in the modern Imperium, and believe they are a closer reflection of what he wished for humanity as well. They do not regard Him as divine, merely as a wise and knowledgeable teacher who tried his utmost to help and guide humanity, and who left them as custodians of his knowledge and vision. Maintaining the Lights and recording new histories, discoveries, and other records are given religious reverence, but fundamentally the Magnificat remain, as the Custodes were before them, staunch adherents of the Imperial Truth. There are no gods, only men and monsters with delusions of grandeur. They note with interest, however, the "Living Saints" and "miracles" that adherents to the Imperial Church attribute to the Emperor's divine blessing. Learned adepts such as they recognize these phenomena as psychic in nature, but they are not created by conventional psykers, and analysis of the Living Saints in action shows them not to be affected by Hexagrammic wards that hold back daemons and sorcery, though they are affected by Greyblades and other Pariahs normally. Some Centurions have suggested, based on analysis of Eldar mythic history, that the collective faith of beings with little or no psychic talent may cause a Warp being to coalesce in the form of that belief. This would explain why there are numerous traces of direct intervention by the Eldar gods in their records, some of which have verified physical traces. The atheist stance holds firm for now, but the first Centurion to profess faith in the God-Emperor in future days may already be active in their ranks today.

### Geneseed

Unlike the Custodes, whose enhancements were hand-crafted masterworks of genetic artistry, the Magnificat use gene-seed recognizable to any standard astartes Apothecary. However, it incorporates some new organs, lacks others, and modifies the precise nature and time of implantation for almost all the rest. Magnificat geneseed must be implanted before eight years of age for optimal success rate, though for strong psychic talents discovered as teenagers implantation may be attempted as late as twenty years. The second heart, haemastamen, larramania, and catalepsean node are implanted first, preferably at the age of five; at six to seven the cardinale, omophageis, ear magni, and inocularius are added. Implantation generally pauses for years at this point, and at eight or nine resumes with the valdan furnace, saltis membrane, neuroglottis, and progenoids. The saltis is known to substantially enhance psychic talent and resistance to things of the Warp, by means which are a closely guarded secret, if indeed they are known to anyone living. At the age of ten or eleven, the ossmodula, perpetuis, and multi-lung are added. After this, the marines are full Initiates, and receive no more implants until the age of sixteen, when they are implanted with the fell carapace. They are still not considered fully-implanted brothers until the age of twenty, as the delicate work of enhancing them to the higher standard of the Magnificat required compromises, and the reduced speed of growth was foremost among those. Like the Custodes before them, the Magnificat are biologically immortal, and Light-Captains have been recorded to hold their posts for as much as two millennia.

### Battlecry

Like much of their organization, the battlecries of the Magnificat are unstandardized, though a single squad will usually share a cry, and squads which fight together often may choose a shared one. "Truth's unflinching light!" and "Mens et manus!" are particularly common.

### Index Astartes - Thousand Sons/The Thousand

### Origins

When the Space Wolves struck Prospero and destroyed the Lesser Light which protected the Thousand Sons, most of them died to the suddenly uncontrollable Warp they thought they had command of. Some few struck out for a hidden gate that would lead them to Terra and Magnus; many more went mad, mutated into something inhuman, or died. It is a matter of opinion whether those who became known as The Thousand should be counted among the mad or as a separate category. 

What is fact is that they glimpsed the depths of the Warp and saw the flesh-change they had felt before Magnus met them was the blessing of Tzeentch, Changer of Ways and Master of Fortune, Lord of Magic and Secret-Shaper. While some undoubtably were driven quite mad by their glimpse of the natures of Change and Reality, others supplicated themselves before it and understood that this was what Magnus feared; embracing the greatness of Chaos and the nature of the universe, and its manifest superiority to the Emperor's vision of a 'perfect', static galaxy. The Great Conspirator smiled as its plots came to fruition in ways not even its instrument Vulkan suspected, and it directed its Lords of Change and new marine devotees to round up other marines who had not yet seen the light and convert them. These efforts proved very successful, and so, renouncing the name "Sons" and its ties to the blinkered, foolish Magnus, the Thousand were born. 

Already few in number before the Burning of Prospero, the Thousand actually numbered only 593 on entering Tzeentch's service. That being the case, they were largely uninvolved in the Heresy War, seen only in a few engagements alongside traitorous elements of the Hydra [Ed.Inq., PROHIBITORI: this was alongside the component led by the false primarch designated 'Betaos', believed to be the daemon known as The Changeling]. They only saw widespread deployment in the retreat from Terra, where they conducted large-scale rituals using the populations of planets in the path of the retreat to slow the loyalists and aid the traitors - particularly the Salamanders - in reaching safe harbor in the Eye of Terror and the Evermaw.

### Homeworld

The majority of the Thousand joined with the Salamanders, fellow servants of Tzeentch, in the Eye of Terror; several cabals assisted in Vulkan's great ritual which transported Nocturne and Prometheus into the outer fringes of the Eye, and after they had moved the great fortress-monastery of the Salamanders to Nocturne's surface, the Thousand were given reign over Prometheus, which they renamed Ariel, Moon of Light (echoing Propero's namesake and Tizca's title). They are mercenaries, working most often with the Salamanders as elite sorcerer cabals, but also with Reforged, Ultramarine, Word Bearer, and White Scar when the compensation is sufficient or the goal suits their purposes. They remain the greatest sorcerers of the traitor astartes, with only a handful of Salamanders matching them, though of course the primarchs, Russ and Mortarion excepted, exceed them.

### Combat Doctrine

The Prosperine cabals of the Thousand have perfected a means of pooling their sorcerous might, ablating the perils of the warp by spreading them across the brotherhood, and sharing capability, psychic strength, and attention through their arcane bond. This bond is so practiced that, under the strange conditions of Warp Rift, it has made their minds and even personalities begin to merge; even when a cabal is split partly in the Eye and partly the Maw, or across Segmenta, they can communicate telepathically and lend small parts of their psychic might to their brothers.

In non-sorcerous strength, they are among the least of traitor astartes, though this by no means makes them weak in absolute terms. Flying under their own power is not uncommon, and a trio of Thousand sorcerers riding a Disc of Tzeentch is a frequent sight when fighting astartes of the three psyker-accepting gods.

### Organization

In the centuries since the Heresy War, the Thousand have repopulated their ranks and probably now number as much as twice their nominal complement. The ambitious servants of the Great Deceiver know no lasting loyalty, all being merely patsies to be manipulated, pieces to be maneuvered in great schemes, and peasants to be fooled. Beyond the soul-bonds formed between a cabal, organization is almost entirely absent. They are to be found anywhere traitor astartes are, providing their excellent sorcerous talents for a price.

### Beliefs

The Thousand Sons were defined by their quest for knowledge, to control the flesh-change and their powers, and this drive persists in The Thousand. Fell artifacts and ancient tomes are the price they demand for their services, and mastery of the nine Rehati Cults of Tzeentch, mastering the sorcerous arts of every aspect of its power, is their dearest goal. They believe that only they can truly achieve mastery of the structure of the universe, and hold themselves superior to all others; only the Ultramarines exceed them in pride.

### Geneseed

All of The Thousand bear significant mutations, but since their pact with Tzeentch they are capable of "riding the tiger" and channeling the change in ways that assist, or at least do not impair, their sorcerous abilities. When these grow great, the Thousand are known to perform rituals of possession, resurrection, and reversion, sacrificing numerous psychically-gifted slaves to move their soul into a new body, reassembling an old body from the parts of the just-sacrificed, or reaching through time to copy the body they possessed in the past and forcing their current husk to match it.

### Battlecry

Each cabal has its own battlecry, but "Your way is ended!" is a common variant.


	16. Index Astartes: Legio XVI, Luna Wolves

### Origins

Horus was found by the emperor very near the beginning of the Great Crusade, in one of the first dozen systems conquered after Sol. He was from the start the golden child, who found himself so alike in mind with his father that he could often complete the Emperor's sentences. His main difference was his empathy for others; his brothers, his marines, and ordinary humans galaxy-wide; the Emperor's regard for humanity was an impersonal, intellectual one, but Horus was invested in all those he met. His Luna Wolves were also favorites of the Emperor, because their disciplined aggression suited his desires for the Crusade. Horus learned to command seventeen of the twenty legions (all save the Trefoil) but his gene-sons were the favorites of both father and son.

His greatest flaw was that he was proud. He admitted this; he tried not to be haughty but had more experience in leading legions than any other primarch, and much more than any save Dorn. He was skilled in diplomacy and in strategy, and while he could admit that his tactical expertise was inferior to Guilliman, Dorn, and Perturabo, he could never resist adding "with the exception of assault, of course" or bending his turn of phrase to suggest "but not much inferior". His pride was perhaps strongest in his diplomatic skills and ability to win systems to the Imperium without anything more than a subtle, veiled show of force. So it was not surprising that when he was made Warmaster and Guilliman seceded, he sought to parley and bring his brother back into the fold. He did tend to his duties with appropriate dedication, prosecuting the Crusade, but he also spent much toil and ink bringing his brother to the table, culminating in the peace talks at Prandium. Horus's plan was to mediate between Guilliman and the Vigilus Marchensis Perturabo, who had made caging in the Ultramarines his single-minded focus; tempers were high, but it was nothing he hadn't dealt with before.

What he hadn’t anticipated was Malcador. He was generally content to allow Malcador free rein over things not directly pertaining to the Great Crusade, though annoyed by his meddling, and so had not noticed his growing paranoia. He was therefore shocked when Malcador confronted him and accused him of conspiring to betray the Imperium to Guilliman and Vulkan, and at a rare loss for words. Malcador, in a paranoid rage, drew the anathame, psychic powers flaring, and stabbed Horus twice, the second time in the heart. Despite the physical and immaterial might the Emperor gave his primarchs, the power of the anathame and Malcador together, attacking him with the most symbolic possible method of murder, overwhelmed him, and he was the first fatality in what would become the Heresy War.

Malcador quickly realized the gravity of what he'd done. He fled, using all his gifts to divert notice and cover his tracks. No one knew who had killed him, except - but that is a separate thread of the story, not relevant to the Luna Wolves. All they knew was that their primarch was dead, Prandium in open war between the contingents of Iron Sages and Ultramarines present, and only the efforts of the diplomatic team Horus had brought to the world keeping Guilliman and Perturabo from joining the fray. Only when further ships from Ultramar arrived at the edge of the system did the Iron Architect call his sons to retreat, taking the fleets which brought them and the Luna Wolves to the system and Horus's body and leaving before they could be trapped by the might of Ultramar.

The Wolves present were distraught, and the whole legion was in disarray, even those who did not yet understand why they felt a crushing despair. And none moreso than the First Captain, Ezekyle Abaddon, who was acting Legion Master while Horus saw to other parts of the Crusade, including the peace talks. Abaddon, when he learned, took on the full title of Master, and his first act was to rename the legion the Sons of Horus. Grief clouded his judgment, however, and after a nearly-disastrous campaign in the Macharia Sector, his three brothers of the Mournival insisted that he was not, for the moment, fit to be Legion Master. Reluctantly, he conceded the point, and Hastur Sejanus took command. Abaddon remained First Captain and a brother of the Mournival, in which Sejanus replaced himself with Gavriel Loken, to bring the council's number back to four.

Sejanus was not as capable a strategist as his gene-father, but proved to be nearly his equal as a diplomat. In his first six months as Legion Master he secured three systems without a shot fired and a half-dozen more by force of arms, as fast a pace as any primarch except Guilliman and Horus had managed in their first six months of command. However, the Sons of Horus remained depressed and grief-stricken, with nearly every battle reminding them of their lost gene-father in some way. Fulgrim, always the closest companion of Horus in life, was also close with the Mournival, and suggested to Tarik Torgaddon that a change of battlefield, such as a campaign in Segmentum Pacificus, might help to clear their minds. Sejanus's Mournival agreed that this seemed worthwhile. Loken raised the issue that it would impede their ability to respond if Guilliman attacked the Imperium, but after a brief debate they agreed that given the massive numerical disadvantage, it would be uncharacteristically foolish of him to try.

Less than a year later, tensions bubbled further, and Guilliman, Vulkan, and Jaghatai Khan proclaimed the Isstvan Accord, a unified alliance against the "Fool's Imperium". Fulgrim asked his brothers that he be named Warmaster of Retaliation to respond to this, and he was acclaimed as such in short order. He prepared a massive assault, seven legions and more against the rebel's three, and sent a messenger to the Sons of Horus telling them to continue their campaign, as he had the situation in hand and did not wish to wait for them to travel to join him. Abaddon vehemently disagreed and wanted to join the Retaliation Fleet, but the rest of the Mournival and Sejanus overruled him, and the legion remained in the Laanath Rifts and continued their campaign to exterminate the Helgrammite xenos.

With no primarch, and no gene-brothers present at Istvaan, they did not receive the psychic shock that alerted a number of other distant forces to the occurrence of the Istvaan Massacre. Their first notice was a message from Terra and the Imperial Fists that eight legions had turned traitor and were preparing an assault. While the rest of Mournival argued over what to do, Abaddon, acting on his own initiative, glassed several Helgrammite planets which were suspected to have substantial human slave populations. The argument which ensued was the fiercest and most heated any incarnation of the Mournival had ever engaged in. Ultimately, Sejanus grudgingly accepted the fait accompli had changed the calculus, and decided that the accessible worlds of the Helgrammite's core - excluding primarily its capital world, nearly unassailable behind its shield of Aetheric Fire - would be glassed, and nearly all of the legion would depart for Terra to defend Her. But Sejanus was a man who understood incentives, and still wanted to ensure Abaddon would regret exceeding his authority and forcing his Legion Master's hand. So the reserve force left to guard against the Helgrammites or other forces of the Laanath Rifts retaking territory in the legion's absence, twenty companies chosen by lot, were commanded by Abaddon. Who Sejanus told, in very clear terms, that should he disobey this order and follow the legion to Terra, he would be executed by the Legion Master personally, Mournival-Brother or no.

The bulk of the Sons of Horus soon arrived at Terra, and Sejanus quickly integrated his legion's forces into the defenses of the Sol System and its surrrounding sector. The Sons took on all patrol duties outside the solar defenses's Third Ring (encompassing Jupiter's orbit), and the Imperial Fists and Iron Sages previously on patrol returned to their specialties, making the defensive networks, respectively, more unassailable and even more costly to penetrate. Sons of Horus were therefore the first to find the Blood Angels when they emerged from the Webway from the Catherin Gate (within the Sub-Sector Solar but outside System Solar). This was fortunate; due to the change wreaked on the Angels during their struggle with the shard of the C'Tan Nyadra'zatha the Burning One, the Sons did not initially recognize their cousins, and had another legion been the point of contact, hostilities would likely have broken out. But the Sons of Horus were not just the masters of assault, but also of diplomacy; the Brother-Captain who led the patrol was able to defuse the tensions and resolve the misunderstanding. So it was that they welcomed their cousins firstly with open arms and secondly with open loading bays, as the bulk of the expeditionary fleets they had sailed with all arrived above Cather to transport the Angels to Terra.

It was less than a month from that day until the traitors were sighted in the Sol Sector, and while the defenses held them back from Terra Herself for a month, it was only a month. Soon enough, traitors touched down on Terra, and the armies were face to face. The Angels and Sons sallied forth from fortifications to tear apart the traitors, but especially the Sons; after losing their gene-father to Chaos and treacherous betrayal, they were outright eager to martyr themselves as long as the damage they dealt to the traitors was an achievement worthy of their sacrifice. The Sons took the heaviest casualties, almost as heavy as the Shattered Legions had taken at Isstvan, but with glad hearts, for their lives were dearly bought. The later aphorism "your lives are the Emperor's currency; spend them well" is said to be inspired by the Sons of Horus on Terra, for the legendary feats they achieved with their dying breaths. An assault team of five squads assaulted a traitor Titan and successfully killed its Princeps and her Moderatii and destabilized the plasma reactor which powered it; this ripped a huge hole in the traitor lines at the cost of only forty marines, and it was far from the greatest legend the Sons of Horus bought with the Emperor's currency in those days. That honor goes to Sejanus and the Mournival, who joined the elite brotherhood of primarch-killers; they fought the Twin Pilgrims to a standstill, locking them in place for the whole melee to be obliterated by a loyal Titan's cannon, banishing the daemons for centuries. By their sacrifices, the forces of Chaos were defanged, and the three daemon primarchs who had remained on-task - Vulkan, Fulgrim, and Lorgar/Madail - were forced to make a last-ditch attempt to assault the Palace directly.

In the wake of the Siege, the Sons were the most shattered of loyalist legions, and the most leaderless. They happily accepted the division of the legions into orders, and divided in small groups, most one to three companies in size, spread widely through the Reconquest purging the Chaos-backed leadership installed by the traitors. The orders quickly developed wildly varied cultures from the diverse places they fought and recruited, but remain united by their ways of war and by their devotion to their martyred primarch.

### Homeworld

The Luna Wolves legion was never particularly tied to their primarch's homeworld of Cthonia; they recruited from it, and many brothers used its naming conventions for the war-names they took on becoming fully inducted astartes, but Horus spent most of the Crusade concerned with the galaxy rather than his first world, and this was reflected in his legion's attitude. Cthonia was destroyed at some point during the Heresy War, but probably not by the Space Wolves. It's possible it fell apart on its own; the planet was thoroughly mined-out and fragile.

The Sons of Horus were largely fleet-based after Horus's death, deploying along the lines of what modern observers call "perpetual crusade", though that terminology did not yet exist. The one world with strong emotional ties for the legion was Prandium, the world where Horus was murdered. It sits very near the Evermaw, however, so while successor orders of the Sons eagerly join any campaign to push forward from the Iron Line to retake it, the Imperium's hold on Prandium has never been better than "tenuous" since the outbreak of hostilities, and so it cannot be said to be their home world in any sense.

Many orders have a handful of established recruiting worlds in the sectors they frequent, but since their preferred way of war is rapid assault and decapitation strikes, they move more often and further than any other loyal gene-line. Only the Obsidian Fists match them in this regard, and unsurprisingly Obsidian and Horus orders are close allies.

### Combat Doctrine

The Sons of Horus, as the Luna Wolves before them, are a legion of conquerors. They are capable of defense, but their aptitude is for the decapitation strike, the tearing down of fortifications, the unstoppable force that can destroy, circumvent, or render redundant even the most immovable object. This contributes to their strong preference for fleet-based deployment over establishing order fortresses. They are not heedless of casualties, but will throw as much firepower as necessary at the target to remove it decisively, thoroughly, and permanently, though unlike the crusading Fists are open to withdrawal from a theater if they judge the target beyond their ability to overpower.

In executing these attacks, they make heavy use of two specialist formations. The Justaerin, terminator-clad elite, are the brutal, close-quarters experts. Since the days of Horus, they have been the tip of the spear for massed assaults; originally they were only the First Company of the legion, but expanded to encompass around a tenth of most successor orders. The second, the Pernixatoi, developed later, in the Reconquest, and were formalized after the Dark Khagan's 'Great Scourge'. They are a bike-mounted formation, primarily Attack Bikes, and were codified in order to fight the raiders of the White Scars, whose mobility prevented the Justaerin from being brought to bear. They operate at greater range and are highly mobile, and are used when the opponent has a speed advantage, such as against Eldar, or when a rapid strike is capable of circumventing defenses or cutting off enemy forces from their allies. Most often, they will establish a beachhead from which other brothers can deploy, but many other times they establish a false beachhead, diverting enemy forces to create a point of weakness for the remainder of the legion to assault. They are not master deceivers like the long-ago Hydra, but Sons of Horus have exceedingly keen tactical minds and the virtues of mixed strategies and not leaking information are among those they inculcate to the point of instinct.

Besides their assault tactics, though, they are also inheritors of Horus's skill with diplomacy. The Sons do not rely much on surprise for their shock assaults, so they are perfectly happy in most cases to parley with the enemy before open hostilities. Commanding officers customarily decorate the inner trim of their armor with two rows of symbols; on the left pauldron, a stylized full moon for each system brought to bay peacefully; on the right, a new moon, in eclipse, for each system pacified at the end of a bolter barrel. For enemies who they parley with, they will often recount this practice, and invite them to count the numbers of each. In internal negotiations, they prefer the 'choleric contrast'; an aggressive subordinate officer demands large concessions and threatens to raise arms against uncooperative 'allies', and the commander overrules them with a more diplomatic approach. The name comes from a medical superstition of Old Terra, four humors which were said to make up the mind and body of men, which has been commonly resurrected in Horusian successor orders, who find it suits their primary means of squad division admirably.

### Organization

In the Siege of Terra, eight-tenths of the Sons of Horus legion died, including the Legion Master, his three Mournival brothers, and most of the officer corps. They were valiant, distinguished martyrdoms, well worth the sacrifice, but the deaths left the legion broken and leaderless nonetheless, with only the stranded Abaddon in a position to claim any authority. Though his absence at the battle that shattered them was an unwilling one, his brother marines still considered it disqualifying and refused to accept his authority. Therefore, in the reorganization of the astartes under the Imperial Vestige, they were therefore second only to the Shadow Brotherhood in how small their chosen units of division became. Abaddon's fleet, which took the name Knights of Horus, remained intact, but the remainder of the legion was split into small orders they called "Speartips", all around a company in strength. Over the centuries, they have largely expanded their numbers, but Sons of Horus successor orders larger than a battalion remain very rare, and almost all of those are descended from the Knights of Horus.

### Beliefs

The cult of the Sons of Horus is unusual, in that it barely features the Emperor at all. They respect him, to be sure, but it is more like a man's distant respect for his absent father, who paid his family's bills but never spoke to his son directly. The Emperor's martyrdom for the Imperium is praised, but rarely without also mentioning Horus's martyrdom in the same breath. Their reverence, which is much more religious than most astartes cults, is almost solely for their primarch. He is revered as Warmaster and incarnation of assault in the flesh, as diplomat who peacefully integrated more worlds than any other leader in the Crusade or afterward, and as holy martyr who was slaughtered to break the Crusade and begin the long struggle against treason, heresy, and Chaos.

Sons orders are known for their martyrdom complexes; whether from psychic backlash from their primarch's death or from the culture and cult the orders maintain, the astartes of this gene-line see a worthy death as the highest aim, taking many powerful enemies of the Emperor with them to the grave. They are also noted for each choosing a 'patron saint' from the four brothers of Sejanus's Mournival, emulating their virtues and ways of war and meditating on their failings and how to resist falling into them. Sejanus, though he served in the Mournival for Horus himself before becoming Legion Master, is not considered a proper patron to take; he is instead the patron of the chaplaincy, as the first to lead the legion past Horus's death and on to honor his sacrifice. Using the old medical ritual of the four humors, the four patrons are each said to embody one; Abaddon the choleric personality, Loken the phlegmatic, Aximand the melancholic, and Torgaddon the sanguine. Astartes of Horus's line choose as patron the man most like themselves, and ascribe to this similarity significance for what specialty they should train in.

### Geneseed

The only noted physical peculiarity of the Luna Wolves is a remarkable similarity of appearance to their primarch, well beyond the normal adaptation caused by geneseed. Horus's appearance was as normal as primarchs can possibly be, without the odd coloration of Vulkan, Corax, or Curze, or the savage features of Russ or Sanguinius, and yet much of the legion looks remarkably similar to him after successful implantation.

Psychologically, there are more significant changes. The Sons of Horus, like their father, are excellent at understanding their foes and opposite numbers, and therefore quite good at diplomacy. But this also produces a strong tendency toward conformity, despite the best efforts of the Chaplains and Apothecaries to remedy this through targeted hypo-indoctrination. This has led to a number of incidents where portions of the Imperial command structure declared rebellion against Terra and the local Sons of Horus orders joined their cause, which has given the High Lords substantial pause around the prospect of creating more successors of their line.

### Battlecry

"For Lupercal!" or a repetitive chant of "Lup-er-cal! Lup-er-cal!"


End file.
